


Remnant

by Han_shot_first



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: A denial of satisfaction, Dom/sub Undertones, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Eluvians (Dragon Age), F/M, Here be smut anyway, It might be Dread Wolf sex, Phenomenology of the Spirit, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, This was supposed to be PWP, Weird Plot Shit, definitely weird, nothing is resolved, this is not a fix it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:27:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 23,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21848896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Han_shot_first/pseuds/Han_shot_first
Summary: When she wakes later, she doesn’t tell anyone what she dreamt in the Fade. Not Dorian, not Cole.~~~ Updated 2 Nov ~~~I trust you with my heart. Whatever ragged pieces of my heart I have left are yours.~~~Vignette style, Post-Trespasser, Not-A-Fix-It, Not a Baby Fic, Not a Time Travel Fic. What's left?Weird shit.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Comments: 94
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

When she woke later, she didn’t tell anyone what she dreamt in the Fade. Not Dorian, not Cole.

She had stood in a private room of the Vir Dirthara, staring into an eluvian that had stood glowing and trapped in the Fade. She saw a glowing pattern in green, crackling and growing across her upper arm. It flashed and seared, forcing her onto a knee again with an incredible pain, unmatched by any she had ever felt, even during the Exalted Council.

' _The People kneel too easily,_ ' she snarled, the memory of Mythal's words striking up the pride in her heart to stand, but the pain incapacitated her. All she could do was watch her body shake. The power of Fen’Harel’s mark crawled over her chest. It expanded, inching its way across slowly, taking its time as though she had forever.

She knew she did not.

She stared into the floating eluvian before her. Her simple linen nightgown had gained an unhealthy, unnerving lustre of shifting light. She turned her gaze at the implacable stare of the ancient wolf statue guarding the mirror. She gritted her teeth against the shriek of pain that tore across her left side, even as blue lightning ripped across the bronze mosaics on the walls all around her.

 _“The mark will eventually kill you. Drawing you here gave me the chance to save you…at least for now._ ”

Did he not save her, before he dissolved her arm from below her elbow? Her heartbeat was becoming erratic. She had failed again to remember what it was like to love without pain. To feel curiosity without fear. To think of the Fade, the Veil, and spirits with open-mindedness, and not the crushing pressure that she was running out of time. On her knee, head bowed but pride undimmed, she took her frustration, her suffering, and her love for a Dread Wolf, and curled her remaining hand into a fist. She raised it above her and opened it like she did when she had an anchor in another palm, not so long ago.

She envisaged a conduit.

She thought of tunnels and keys. Of bridges and pathways.

She closed her eyes and thought of Compassion, a spirit who became more than a spirit. Compassion, who crossed over the Veil to become a boy, a companion, and a friend. Cole, who become Maryden’s lover. She thought about how Cole said _someone took a body_ because someone important had asked. Had that been Solas? And when she asked what he saw when he looked at her, he had said something about birds against the sun, and being too bright.

'But what the hell does that mean?' she thought for the thousandth time, but she lifted her head to watch her reflection in the eluvian.

‘Well, I certainly am bright now,’ she thought bitterly.

Instinctually, in the way of dreams, she looked at the mirror and began to pull. The tendrils of the Dread Wolf’s power fought her. Blood that was not blood, a song or a trace of time... whatever Cole meant, the power in her was not meant to be her power. She hitched a breath and thought of time and of flipping hourglasses. How she wanted more time. More stories of his past, more time to challenge him about the future, just more time! The struggle for control over the power began to overwhelm her, trickling back over her skin to reclaim what little she had gained, and her hand began to waver above her. As she felt herself near to screaming, tears streaming, she saw the eluvian begin to shimmer.

‘It’s the Fade,’ she thought to herself. ‘Tricks and deception.’

The hand that reached out from the eluvian could be anyone’s. Belong to any thing’s. The fingers were long and beautiful, but that too meant nothing. The wrist was strong and lithe, and the smudges on the fingertips pointed to hours with charcoal and ink, but that could have meant anything. She didn’t want to hope.

'Spirits of Hope are much too rare,' she thought. 

And when was the last time she felt any real hope? The fingertips were light upon her palm, barely touching, but the magic that flowed from them was anything but unfamiliar. It was blessedly cooling, like the softest spring breeze in the safety of the thicket of a forest outside Wycombe. A hidden safe place, where the Lavellan clan would take the youngest of the halla herd with their mothers to graze after a hard winter. Her brow and scalp, covered in thick sweat, was soothed. She wanted to weep with the remembrance of this gentle, sweet power. His mana flowed and cooled her tortured body. He touched his palm to hers so softly, and she called his name, the pathetic relief palatable in her body. Then she remembered her position, and struggled to stand.

She would not kneel to him. Not ever.

The bright green glow of his power continued to siphon away the pain. The effect felt like a large, soft feather, gently sweeping and curling across her chest. She breathed through the unexpected sensuality and sweetness, and involuntarily, felt her nipples harden. She remembered other times, other places. She stared at the eluvian, wishing she could see the rest of him. Wondered if he could see her. Certain that he must, if he could find her hand so easily. She sighed as the pain continued to recede and the pleasure increased, the jangled nerves confused and unwinding. She wanted so badly to fall over with relief, but she clenched her buttocks and thighs hard, locking her legs in place.

No, she would never be brought low to this man again. They were two warriors - two rulers – in a kingdom locked in a deadly struggle. Two former lovers caught in a tangle of desire. As the last of the green glow of his magic flickered out, only the eluvian illuminated her skin. Without warning, she grabbed at the long-fingered hand.

“Wait.”

The Fade reflected more than she could know. Too much flickered around her. Thoughts and images cascaded, some wanton, others battle tactics. But on the other side of the mirror, he was captivated by her simple nightgown, so unlike the candlesilk and griffon-feather confections the pleasure slaves of the Evanuris would employ. Lavellan's plain, unbleached cotton was a thousand times more effective. He remembered the times when he pleasured her out of it, just to see how ruthlessly he could cage her, plunging his fingers, his lips, his tongue into her body, until she was undone and unable to speak more than her love for him in a mindless, almost indelible murmur. Surely, she could not know. It could only be a nightgown to her. A mere construction in the Fade. He narrowed his eyes on the other side of the mirror, assessing her closely.

It could be a ploy, but the drop of her eyes to his hand and the uncontrolled rage of the power that called him here said otherwise. His power had continued to pull him to her. He had thought dissolving her arm would end this tie binding them, literally cutting off the liability. None in his organisation could know that he could be a puppet in the Fade to her, a marionette to her call when the remnant of his anchor built to unacceptable levels in her spirit. He wanted to hate her for it, except she appeared to have no understanding of the power she still held. This unexpected vessel, still cracking at the seams – perhaps she had no choice but to cry out for him before she exploded.

He had asked his agents to report if there were physical manifestations in her daily life, but the difficulty in infiltrating her inner circle had been considerable. And so, like any other starved, mangy wolf, prowling around the edges of the winter forest, he had waited for his prey. When she fell with his name on her lips, trapped at the edge of his eluvian network, it was all too easy to come at her call.

He remembered trespassing into her bed, and the lines he drew in his mind, in her bed, and on her body. Lines he swore he would not cross. When she said his name in the dark, it felt more like a hymn of recognition, tumbled and smeared into the freckles of his skin. His name was the space between the stars, and when she told him this, he filled her mouth with his tongue, trying to stop her from speaking further, but her song continued. It pulsed in the magic in her hand, binding them. 

_Solas, Solas, Solas_ , she wept into his neck, biting and sucking at the junction to his shoulder, her hips bucking helplessly against him. She moved to draw him in even as he weakly shied away, but she had given him all she had to give. Her whole heart, beating bloody and true. He heard her song wrap around the crude bones that encompassed his spirit. The cracks and breaks, long since weakened and denied, were tempted to heal.

Whimpers escaped his lips.

She understood the symphony of need she heard, of the desire to belong and to be found, to be forgiven and to be loved. She instinctively held all that was contained within the sound that treacherously escaped from beneath the mask that he wore. This diminished little elf girl from the Free Marches had moved between the shadows for so long, never belonging, never finding peace, but in him, she had found her kindred spirit. She had moved to hold him closer, to bring him into her at last, her body and her eyes hot with need.

His eyes had flashed in warning. She had seen too much. Heard too much. The song had resonated, a crescendo that threatened to pull him under, pull him inside out.

Was he a spirit, or an Elvhen?

Was he Solas of the Elvhen, or Solas of the Inquisition?

He felt split down the middle, unable to hold against the tide of love for her and his mission.

He was lost as she lifted her hips against his aching, weeping cock, and---

**It would not do.**

He could not accept it. Once again, he decided to give in to his predator instincts and devour what he could not accept. It was better for him - better for them both - to hide within the wolf and let it keep them safe. He flipped her over. He punished her with pleasure and overcame her initial resistance that she could do nothing but accept his domination. She submitted, taking all that he had left to give to her until she nearly blacked out with their hedonism. As he wiped out his mana, he cooled her brow and brought her back to him. She sighed in contented bliss as he gently lapped at her sore cunt, his tongue another welcome, blissful sensation and he unconsciously lengthened and flattened it out, letting the wolf out to play in the darkness. He lifted her legs up and outwards, stretching her groin like a physic, drinking in the almost jelly-like slippery wetness from its source.

" _Your cunt overflows with the sweetest wine,_ " he crooned in Elvhen, then stuffed his tongue further inside, seeking the very mouth of her womb, the fount of her spring. He licked, undone by the flavour.

" _Ripe and ready to eat, sweet Elvhen maid._ "

She was not fluent enough to understand, but she understood his pleasure as his jaws opened; he reached up with a long arm and covered her eyes. She fastened her mouth onto the heel of his hand and sucked, her eyes closed in rolling pleasure. Gently, so very carefully, he fastened his teeth onto the front of his prey’s quivering mound. He had not done this in so, so long. She whimpered, but if the strangeness affected her, she was too far gone with pleasure to care. His other hand was wrapped around his leaking cock. He ignored the sac that wanted to swell into a huge knot. It would have no place that night. He let his teeth very gently worry at her swollen knot of nerves. When his Inquisitor jerked slightly, he grinned a very wolfish slash of teeth, and did not let up his lapping or his smooth, careful troubling at her oversensitive skin. It finally registered to Lavellan that the anatomy his mouth was somehow…off.

"How...is that your teeth?" she asked.

He traced her mouth tenderly with slippery fingers, and she sucked on them contentedly on and off. Then he pushed her mouth shut. No further questions, and he worked his jaw open further, taking her as he pleased. She let him. His tongue drew out everything slowly, then faster and harder, curling his tongue and licking her juices out. He tried to be patient, but her scent and taste overwhelmed the wolf. He needed more, and though she started to thrash in pleasure, he decided her body was not reacting quickly enough; he was impatient, his greed for more overtaking him. He withdrew his hands, one from his cock and the other from where it had wandered to her breasts, and drew a glyph into his palm.

Golden light shattered the darkness for a moment.

"What?---" was all the time she had to ask before the scent of something sweet filled her bed. His hands massaged her, healing the slight soreness and bringing a fresh, swelling ache to be filled. She moaned, her clit and her hole pulsing with renewed desire for him. Delicate perfume had filled the air. The scent wasn’t quite a raspberry or a strawberry. It wasn’t a blackberry or a bramble. She was wet and aching, her body bursting with coolness and heat.

"Mistberry," he sighed, but it sounded more guttural, like the rumble of an animal, or the warning of a great beast. "I have not had a taste for time without measure."

And without warning, he curled his great tongue into her, fat and heavy, and drove her hard against the bed, lifting her shaking legs over his wide shoulders. She moaned as his teeth pressed hard against her swollen clit, but caused no harm, only giving her the slightest edge of painful pleasure that she needed to send her over another devastating time, just as his tongue licked back up her channel, scratching just exactly where she needed it. Her eyes flew open in screaming astonishment. Her vision was greeted not by the darkness of her canopy, but a black Void, red eyes and white pupils, thousands of them, all staring with the focus of predator upon prey at her. Her mind threatened to fracture.

Was this real? Were they in the Fade? Was reality bending, for she saw black fur and white vicious teeth. His scent. The feel of his fingers.

She was filled with the space between the stars.

She accepted it.

She was feeling tongues everywhere; on her breasts, her cunt, the pleasure rising, and she was unafraid, because he was there, everywhere around her in the darkness. She didn’t close her eyes, only stared into the Void, watching the eyes, the millions of eyes as they took in her pleasure, and she greedily reached for all the pleasure he ruthlessly wrung out of her. The eyes above her, red against white sclera, narrowed in approval. He held her up, her legs against his chest, then pinned her against his mouth. He lapped at the walls of her cunt, stuffed so hard and so thick she could hardly breathe. As he pushed her down, she felt his tongue sneak into her mouth, the smell and taste of a strange, sweet berry and her own pleasures, and she clung to him, her arms wrapped around the great shaggy pelt of his shoulders.

_(When had she added her fur blankets?)_

She didn’t care, as long as he never stopped his fingers as they slid into her and along both sides of her clit, pinching and milking it, his mouth slanted overs, drinking her in like he could never walk away. She was mewling, crying, beating his shoulders and as she crested, coming down, and he snarled, actually slapping her clit a few times, viciously taking her over again. She yipped and shouted, howling her surprise into his mouth, but he was finally, finally, finally becoming satisfied with her reactions; he licked at her tears, and took all she had to give him.

"More, my mistberry creature, my one heart," he crooned into her ear.

_'How?!'_

The thought was a shrieking comet in her mind as her body crunched into another climax, but he just chuckled, that beloved sound in her ear as she rode the heat of her blaze.

She shivered but did not want this to stop. Not ever.

He laughed with real joy. A precious sound. She heard it in her mind again, delirious. This could not be real.

_'My heart, my love. You're such a good, greedy girl.'_

His last words were punctuated by fat thrusts of his fingers. The assault on her cunt had renewed its pace, and in her head, she heard his command, as clean as the moon, and as inevitable as the turn of the tide.

_‘Come, and give it all to me! Clench down and release! Pour it out, and let yourself go; I must have it! Release! Release!’_

She was helpless to his command. This time, she blacked out as she hurled into the Void, her body bucking and convulsing one final, devastating moment that seemed to tear her apart. She held her breath, unable to take in the air as pleasure wracked her frame. He pressed a hard kiss to her temple, her cheeks, the sides of her mouth as he finished, painting the sheets beside her with his seed. He was too ashamed of his need for her to finish on her body. He was too ashamed to do anything but attend to her body as the most fastidious of slaves of Arlathan ever were. She was unconscious, her mind falling into the Fade and her body utterly exhausted in an exquisite compliment of trust and love. 

His heart leapt with painful joy. He wept. He was disgusted with himself, feeling shame as he wiped her down with the softest of clean cloths. He held her close to his trembling skin until dawn, feeling she was the most precious spirit he had ever known, the most important, and knowing he would soon slip away soon like the trickster and thief he was. He wished for the finest of elvhen perfumes to adorn her perfectly ruined body, aging every second in front of his slanted eyes. He wished for years to make love to her, to show her how he could fit his proud length into the depth of her, give her days of grinding on and off his fat knot, filling her with sticky seed.

He did not dare meet her in the Fade, for there he would be tempted to play out his real fantasies. He wanted to pull her into a rope harness, positioning her into the perfection of intricate designs that celebrated the trees, the earth, the moon, and the constellations. He wanted to bring her off with a well-timed tug of a rope knot, and display her at his feet. He wanted to read books of Elvhen epic poetry to her as he fed her mistberries from the halls of master potters, whose crafts were honed over hundreds of years. He wanted to see what she thought of the dark golden berries, which ripened for only three weeks every spring, in the highest peaks of Arlathan.

He didn't want to tell her that they fell extinct, like so much he loved, long ago, when he cast the Veil.

He had gently touched the anchor nestled deeply in her hand, feeling as it greedily gnawed into her bones, helpless to stop how it knit itself like a poisoned worm into her spirit. He would have taken it back from the beginning, but she had ever represented his failure and his weakness. She had come to represent his guilt now too.

“We were never gods.”

The snarl that escaped him was that of the wolf, and it came from a mouth with too many sharp teeth. He hated himself beyond words for the blurring of the lines between them. She was too bright, and he was too weak. He thought of the People. The broken People and the murdered Mythal. He cursed himself most of all. The next morning, wrapped sweetly in her blankets in Skyhold, alone in her bed, her first thought was that yet again, he had not claimed her.

Standing now before the rippling eluvian, she tightened her grip around long fingers smudged with ink and charcoal, cool and soothing, the nails perfectly filed. The beloved scholarly mage hands were calloused and invisibly bloody besides, but she felt them softly trembling.

“Solas. Come back to me.”

He moved immediately to pull his hand away, back through the mirror.

“Ar lath vir suledin.”

She was gentle and beseeching. For the first time since he had taken her arm and left her sobbing on her knees, she heard a heartbreaking, quiet reply.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan.”

When she woke up, the remnant of her left arm and her left shoulder felt a little better. Her body felt more stable, as was her resolve to keep fighting. She would prevent Solas from taking down the Veil, and stop him from making the same mistake twice. She would save Thedas again, no matter the cost to herself. She gripped her right hand, and made a fist. She refused to think of the feel of his hand in hers. It wasn’t real. It was only the Fade.

“Telanadas, Inquisitor,” she reminded herself.

She remembered Inquisitor Ameridan's lover and her sacrifice. 'Nothing is inevitable'.

‘And yet some things are,' she thought, as she got up to greet the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Certain lines of text from Mythal, Cole, Solas, and Lavellan come directly from the game. If you've played it, you'll spot them.
> 
> All the smut is mine.
> 
> I've purposefully not described her. In my mind alone, she looks like how I designed her in my game, but I prefer reading fic where she looks however the reader wants her to look. However in keeping with Solas' character, she is a female elf. I'm avoiding naming her anything but Lavellan for now.


	2. Chapter 2

She saw the wild sentinel chough when it landed, and its reappearance lifted a smile from her tired spirit. Its wings were a glossy black and its legs made her unexpectedly happy; they were flame-coloured sticks against the grey stone of her balcony, and the contrast was most pleasing. The pale morning sun was rising and burning the mist from the air. The bird cocked its head and sweetly called to her. She enjoyed the sound.

The harsh winter had melted into an early spring at Skyhold, but a cold had settled in her bones, and it felt like it would never ease. The feeling had been getting worse of late. She had chosen to ignore it, while the physic had told her to eat more regularly. The cook at Skyhold had been plying her with hardier Fereldan soups. Cullen had been in raptures. Without his noticing, she had been feeding the chunky meat to his Mabari, Coop. She felt around in her dressing gown for the scrap of bacon that she had saved from breakfast.

The chough hopped forward, backwards, and chirped again.

She told herself that she was not training the wild from its nature. She merely liked to hear its song in the morning, and if it did not arrive sometimes, she missed it. And so, the bacon.

The bird waited until she walked away to take its prize.  
  
It was no pet.

\---

“Report.”

The word was a command that demanded a response from her lips, but she was her Mother’s daughter. And he was not the only one who knew how to lie by omission.

“She is as well as can be expected.”

An eyebrow raised, unamused.

“Clarify.”

A huff of irritation escaped her. Beautiful golden eyes were narrowed with undisguised hate. His face appeared placidly bored, as though he was unaware of the seething irritation running through her veins. She was barely giving him what he asked. He was abusing her lack of choice, and he was a man who tore such chains from his People. He added it to his pile of smoke, bones, and ashes. What was another sin, if he could put it all to rights? His head and heart hurt, as her familiar eyes, so like that of his oldest friend’s, stared back at him in abject hatred. She pinned him down like an insect to her spider's form, thinking, ‘She’s alive. She lives and breathes to tear your lying, scheming spirit from your body, and consign it to the depths of the Void, where the Forgotten Ones may feast upon it for an eternity and a day.’

Only she was fairly sure that might have been _her_ truth.

“The Inquisitor eats very little, sleeps only in fits, and seems to rely almost entirely on buckets of Antivan tea.”

She watched with pleasure as his mouth downturned into a familiar moue of distaste and he turned away in disgust.

“And what of her plans?”

“And how, pray tell, is a wild crow meant to find its way into the War Room?”

He turned back and his gaze pierced her, his cold eyes appearing at once both commanding and pitiless.

“I am most certain that you will find a way.”

She scoffed at him. It was a harsh sound, a crow sound, and she loved the feel of it in her throat. It was always good to laugh at the patriarchy, and to scorn a false god was particularly delicious. Oh yes, the way his wide eyes, so strangely shaped for an elf, began to screw up in little nuggy irritation – oh yes, that was a fine piece of revenge for her morning’s drudgery. She was Morrigan, a Witch of the Wild, not some errand girl, and never a spy for anyone other than herself. Not for a hundred dragon teeth, or that shimmering veil quartz amulet she once saw Vivienne sporting in Val Royeaux. Not even for Mother, wherever she was. _At least, not anymore._

“From what stems your amusement?”

“You, the Dread Wolf. Brought low, by a mere Dalish girl.”

She needled him as the barb hit. She switched to flawless Elvhen, the Well providing her with all she needed.

“ _One such as her would have been a baseborn child. Casteless, lowest born. Manual labour only. To the fields!_ ” 

His eyes simmered in warning, but she was relentless, reminding him of the past he loved so much. She wielded it like a knife to his heart. The shemlen Witch of the Wild felt power in the words, and she stepped into his personal space.

“ _Never to walk the Great Library. Much too stupid to learn. They are illiterate. Keep them out. They are polluted! Unhygienic! Unclean—_ ” 

His hands came up, palms forward, and he said one word, so softly.

“ _Stop._ ” 

She could no longer speak; a gaes compelled her. Why? She did not understand. She had asked him once, but he had refused to answer. _Damn him!_

“The Well has shown you much, but in your ignorance, you refuse to understand. _May you learn_. In time, I will release you." She howled in her mind, but could utter not a word. “Go now. Your son is with Abelas. I believe Kieran wanted to play with the nugs. Return tomorrow.”

She turned swiftly, but as she reached the door, she heard his quiet voice again.

“Morrigan. Is she truly well?”

She looked back at him and saw a heartbroken man for a moment, but the hardness in her heart afforded no pity. “What care does a god have for a mere mortal girl?” 

“I am no god, nor did I ever claim it.”

“But you let your followers worship you.”

He sighed, and his brow furrowed. He was tired. “Do you control all who spread your fame far and wide, Witch of the Wilds? Or you claim your advantages, however you can, in times of war?”

She considered, and nodded once in grudging acquiescence.

“No, the Inquisitor is not truly well.”

He did not know why he needed the words from her. He knew the truth the moment she began to equivocate. He knew it from the moment the dreams began again. Taking back the anchor - _ripping her arm apart_ \- was not enough. Acknowledging her mortality and the endless march towards inevitable death _was not enough_. Something more was wrong, and he was certain that his magic was somehow to blame.

After all, in her people’s legends, wasn’t he always the one to blame?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw hell, this is what happens when I get carried away. Instead of a PWP we get Plot.


	3. Chapter 3

She stood at the War Table, and her head pounded as she listened to Leliana’s latest missives from her spy network. The middle ground being sought by the new Divine Victoria, their old friend Cassandra, was not going over well with many of the hard-liners. She tried to listen, to take it all in, but her shoulder was aching, and very little was making sense. Josephine, ever perceptive and kind, gently pushed the porcelain cup towards her. She reached forward with her left arm, cursed herself, and forced her right to take up the cup. She was still training dominance into the right, but it was a slow process. The meat of her brain did not want to translate into the reality of her body. But dear Josie had already angled the handle towards her right hand.

'Ever the perfect diplomat,' Lavellan thought wryly, but the curl of her smile was genuine as she sipped the drink.

It helped, but her head continued to feel as though an army of dwarves had discovered a bright new thaig somewhere behind her right eye, and she eventually called the meeting to a premature end. The rumours of new, concentrated elvhen activity in the Silent Plains, close to the border of Nevarra, would have to wait. 

“Send missives to the Divine,” she indicated to Leliana, and nodded at Cullen, who looked to her with knowing eyes. He followed her out of the War Room and towards her chambers. Once behind the closed doors, he didn't pull any punches anymore. Not with her. 

“When did you last eat something more than a scrap of bacon and drink more than that weird Antivan drink Josie makes for you? You know it’s not actually tea.” 

”If it’s not black as night and steeped as bitter as soot, you Fereldans don’t call it tea.”

”Darn right.”

She snorted as she pulled off her doublet. In a moment, she was stood in her thin shirt and breeches, struggling to get the room to stand still as her head spun. He gritted his teeth, watching her try to hide her symptoms. Without hesitation, as though he were handling another member of his troop, or a particularly recalcitrant horse, he gently took her elbow and guided her to the golden silk couch.

They both hated that couch, and had both privately assumed it was chosen by Vivienne. Nevertheless, it was there, and so he sat her on it. Kneeling at her feet like a common servant, the blond commander began the task of working her tightly fitted riding boots from her legs. Abruptly, she wanted to reach down to pet those famous curls - the ones that prompted so many rapturous poems, some lascivious and others merely coy, from her famous debut at Halamshiral. She sucked in a breath as she remembered another advisor who attended upon her that night. 

“Too rough? Sorry,” muttered Cullen, as he wrenched a boot off at last. He looked at her, and the exertion on his face was comical. He did not look sorry. He looked angry. “Other foot,” he glared, and he took it without waiting. She just looked at him, a little stunned.

“Why are you angry at me?” she ventured. Her dizziness was passing, but she felt as though her head was stuffed with wool. He didn’t look up at her, but continued to vent his frustration on her stubborn footwear. 

“Is it because I went with Zevran’s suggestion to let Leliana plant a few elven spies in Hasmal?” He didn’t comment or look up, ignoring a chance to continue the argument they'd had in the War Room. He continued wrestling with her boot, and her hand itched to run her fingers through the thickness of his hair. Would it be soft or coarse? Springy or smooth? Her last lover had not had... she looked away.

“Is it because I agreed to send the Chargers to Hunter Fell to look for agents of Fen’Harel?’

He fairly ripped the boot off, and she almost chuckled, but her heart was breaking. He stayed kneeling at her feet, breathing a little harder. He looked into her eyes. The battle-hardened brown met hers, took her measure, and he shook his head. Standing up, the human towered over her. He wasn’t wearing his armour or feathery cloak today. Just a doublet and breeches, like he was ready for a sparring match with one of his men. 'Or with me,' she thought.

“When did you last eat a proper meal, Inquisitor?”

Here it came. The tone was deceptively calm. Quiet. Evenly spaced. She looked down into her hand, then moved to hold her stump. A self-hug. It only emphasised her small frame in his bright, cold eyes.

“Come.” His hard, calloused hand had appeared. She flicked her eyes up at him, and then narrowed. She knew he meant to take her to a meal.

“No.”

“We will find something this time that you can tolerate.”

“We won’t. We’ve tried.”

“Then we will try again.”

“The tea –”

“Is not substantial. It will not put meat on your bones or stop your head from spinning. Yes! I can tell!” She had begun to protest, and he had raised his voice only slightly. Her vision vibrated again, most unpleasantly. “It hurts because your body is crying out for nourishment. If the stews aren’t working, then we will tell the cook –”

“No!” Her voice was shrill, and the pain in her throat was like glass in her veins. She was suddenly welling up in tears, and that was unacceptable. “I won’t have you bothering her.”

His eyes widened to incredulous circles. “You won’t… have me… bothering…her?” he repeated. She looked away, and in that moment, he made his move. “Now, we’re finally getting somewhere,” he growled, and she let out a most undignified squeak as he used both of his powerful arms to entrap her on the couch. He took one too-thin wrist, and pressed it down into the plush cushion next to her head. He took her left shoulder, sore but nominally undamaged, and pressed it gently but firmly into the couch. His legs were between hers, and she felt pinned, like an aching butterfly, onto the hateful, silky golden couch.

“C..Commander!” She protested, but he ignored it. Relished it. In the darker parts of him, he loved it. He tucked that feeling away deep inside, where it joined a thousand other such moments, like windblown seeds, waiting with all the others for days of sunshine and gentle rains to bloom into a field of wildflowers.

“Why don’t you think you can bother Skyhold’s cook to make you palatable food, Inquisitor?” 

She tried to wriggle, but all she managed to confirm is that he was in control. He pushed his thumb into the top of the left pectoral muscles of her chest, aching and sore, and she moaned into the glorious pain. He grunted; he knew that sound. He didn’t let up.

“When was the last time you let someone attend to your arm and shoulder?” he asked.

“It’s… healed…,” she huffed around the painful stretch.

“Healing is not a one-time event,” he reminded her. As he eased the movement, he gave her a warning. “Breathe into this.”

He pushed into the movement, and she wanted to scream. He halfway wanted her to scream, because he felt her need for a release of some kind. It was another pleasure she wasn’t letting herself have. But it was not his place. It had not been his place since she chose the damned elf over him. So he held forth, pushed into her muscles, and dug into her pectoral and her bicep. As she pulled and winced, he reminded her to breathe into the pain. After a harsh moment or two, they began to work in tandem. They had always worked as a team. This was just some kind of new extension of it, he would tell himself later as he took himself in hand in his lonely bed, staring into the stars above him through the miserable hole in his roof.

“Why aren’t you asking the cook for something you want?” he asked again, merciless as the Waking Sea as he turned her over on the hated couch and onto her stomach. He was pressing those hard thumbs into her shoulder blades, and she was trembling under his touch. They were not going to discuss what their bodies were doing. It was time for another wind-blown moment. He grasped the stump of her arm and pulled gently back. It was not the first amputee soldier he had helped through a painful stretch, and he did not hold back, watching and thinking of a different moment, a different time, when she might have thrown her head back in pure pleasure.

“She doesn’t know how to cook like a Dalish!”

If she hadn’t been in so much pain, and part delirious because of the weeks of poor nutrition and whatever the hell Josephine had been giving her, he doubted she would have gone even that far into the painful waters of truth. In the dark, harrowed heart of him, Cullen knew he was only hearing a partial truth. He wanted to press for more, but _it was not his damned place_. He was sweating down his back and neck, and his free hand was sticky when he ran it through his hair. 

He leaned over her and said, “Breathe in, Lavellan.”

He moved with her rhythm and pushed into the pressure point just below her armpit, where the tissues were so sensitive. He had seen how she had been leaning to the right. He knew she had been gently babying it. He was relentless. Almost mean. 

When she put her fist into her mouth, stifling a long-held back scream, he slid into her tortured triceps and whispered into her long, pointed ear, “Let go, Lavellan.”

Her eyes flew open. And she did.

\---

It took a little while to come back to herself. When she did, she found that she was laying on her bed, on top of her covers. She was still wearing her breeches and shirt. Her socks and boots were nowhere to be seen, but she suspected they were tidied away neatly. Cullen sat on the hated couch, reading a book. She could not make out the title from the spine, but suspected it was something about war games or military strategy. She looked over at him and called his name. Not his title, but him. He glanced over at her and his brown eyes were no longer angry.

“I think… I’m hungry.”

He blinked in surprise, and then a small smile played around the small scar of his mouth.

“No stew though,” she quickly added.

“More for me,” he replied.

She sat up. To her surprise, she found the movement was better, though she worked a new kind of soreness from her shoulder blades and arms. Much, much better. She avoided his eyes. She found her dressing gown and slippers. He turned his back as she dressed, which she found endearing and strange.

In Skyhold’s kitchen, the cook was overjoyed to take Lavellan’s instructions for a few Dalish dishes.

“If it isn’t too much trouble,” Lavellan began, but the cook surprised her by throwing her thick arms around her.

“Oh, Your Worship!” she gushed, and if it wasn’t for the fact her arms were surrounding her, she would have seen the full body flinch that the honorific gave Lavellan. Cullen saw it, and knew it by heart. The cook had gone into great detail about how if it weren’t for Lavellan, the world would’ve ended, and so it would be her very great pleasure to make a Dalish dish, and whatever else Your Worship would like, oh yes, whatever Your Worship would prefer! Anything for the saviour of the world!

At this, Lavellan’s eyes had grown distant, and she had quickly excused herself.

Cullen found her moments later near Horsemaster Dennet’s compost heap, throwing up the meagre contents of her belly. He handed her a clean linen handkerchief, one of many that showed his initials in Templar blue, carefully stitched by his baby sister. He considered the War Table. Solas had said they would have a handful of months, and then what? Annihilation? How would it come? Slowly, or quickly? Mercifully, with one clean shot, like a good hunter? Or protracted and cruel, in a long bloody war? After a few wrenching moments, Lavellan stood up, wiped her mouth, and walked unsteadily towards the nearest wall of Skyhold.

“It’s all my fault, for not seeing him for what he is,” he heard her whisper. 

“If you want to play that game, then we’re all equally to blame,” he replied with a fierceness matched by the cold mountain air. She wiped her mouth with his linen, grimacing.

“You never loved him. I did. I do,” she confessed, hate and guilt bending her like a reed. She had never admitted to anyone how much she felt for him, and Cullen tucked away the hate that she spoke in the past and present. The War Table must have been killing her. He felt so damned sorry for her. She let out her pain, and he let it wash over him. He could be there for her like this, at least.

“If I had been more clear-headed, maybe I could’ve caught him in his deceit. Maybe none of this would be happening now.” The anguish in her voice was dry as dust, a product of her dehydration.

“Would that mean you would be eating?”

She looked like he had speared her in the guts. “That’s not fair.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You can’t blame all of us, so you blame yourself. I’ve seen it before. Every veteran loses a comrade in arms. Every blooded commander learns to live with the deaths of those under their command. What you’re doing is punishing yourself. What you should be doing is taking that anger out where it belongs. On him.”

The last two words were said with such vehemence, such fury, that she looked at him with clearer eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault, Lavellan.”

She flinched just as hard as if he’d called her by her honorific.

He gauged her reaction, and felt a grim satisfaction as the blow landed true. Checkmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who knew cullen could be such a dom? (checks ao3) oh - all of you. i see, i see.


	4. Chapter 4

The dreamer stood in front of an eluvian again, an incongruous monolith cradled in a field of wildflowers. They flexed and shivered as he parted them, walking towards a stream that broke the gentle slopes with a line of trees and lush grass. He came to the stream, wondering where in Thedas he must be now, and whose dream he had found.

He found treasures hiding amongst the trees. Young halla were nestled and hidden in grass while their mothers foraged. Their shapes were subtle, but a predator always knew where to find his prey. They saw and trembled at his approach, but did not move from their hiding spots. Their coats were wet with dew. They had been there for at least a few hours.

His eyes were gentle and kind as he took in the babies while he fiddled with the wolf’s jawbone at his chest. He pressed his thumb into a tooth, still sharp after all these years. It helped. He looked at the hanal’ghilan and remembered an unexalted plain, soaked with ever-renewing blood… and _her_. He stared into the guileless eyes of perfect golden halla, and he knew he was walking the dreams of a land when they were once common, before the betrayal and the blood. His wolf trembled with the need for blood, but he returned to the eluvian, haunted by the memory of his Inquisitor’s eyes, trembling and trusting in his arms.

At the mirror, he heard an all too familiar pained gasp. He touched the surface immediately, and all around him the Fade changed, reacting to his emotions and magic.

The wildflowers, the meadow and the hanal’ghilan were gone, his peaceful sojourn ruined.

The dreamer strode forward, and before him, a hall stretched into infinity, a corridor of elegantly sculptured sandstone halls housing seemingly millions of bronze and gilded mirrors. Some were still floating in shards, waiting for his attention and repair. Others were sad, empty frames, their connections severed and magic dissipated. Much was an illusion, old traps and tricks for those who wandered without invitation into his domain.

He heard her wail of pain, and it ripped across the shadows in his soul like a clarion call. The wolf snarled in a panic, looking for enemies as he doubled over for a moment in the Fade, the pain translating into a physical manifestation. He gritted his teeth, thankful that his wards still functioned, at least for now, else he would surely be attracting demons. He remembered ignoring her steadily growing pain for two years after the fall of Corypheus, until finally she was screaming into the Void, night after night. He tried so hard to remember how he managed to create his network and put his plans into place, all while knowing that his magic was killing her.

‘When did this start?’ His mind worked feverishly even as he gasped through the pain. He remembered nothing of the like when she wielded his magic during his time with the Inquisition. His only wound was the growing ache of loving her. He looked down at his left hand, where the magic rested. Curious, he unbound the protective layers that hid its presence.

When her cries ripped across the Fade again, it exploded in hissing green fire and nearly blinded him.

“Fenedhis lasa!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a short chapter, but hey, the Dread Egg appears!
> 
> Fenedhis lasa = Meaning officially undefined as of yet, but from [Project Elvhen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553883?view_full_work=true) (thank you so much!): "Go fuck a wolf's dick" or "Go suck a wolf's dick". 
> 
> Does that mean he's saying 'Suck my cock?'
> 
> Stay classy, Dread Egg.


	5. Chapter 5

She writhed, allowing the smallest of light to penetrate her tightly closed eyes. The bright green of magic – his magic – painted agony behind her eyes as she struggled to handle her suffering. She twisted into herself, trying to control her breathing. She told herself that her hand was not a hand. It was not curling into a fist. It was an apple, or maybe a pear.

'Yes,' she thought, grabbing onto the flotsam of the idea in the sea of agony. 'A green pear!'

As her pain grew, spreading first to her wrist and into her forearm, she told herself that the pear had merely rotted; its seeds had sprouted and become a tree. She let her mind wander to distract from her pain, and focused on her breathing. Trees made her think of her long lost vallaslin: Mythal’s tree upon her face, the branches across her forehead and cheekbones, the trunk upon her nose, the divot above her mouth, and the line over her lips. She remembered how painful the bloodwriting was there. She remembered his stolen kisses upon the delicate centreline of her lips.

_Yes, the lips were the worst pain of all. This was nothing in comparison. Truly, it was nothing at all._

Then it doubled and tripled as it came up to her elbow, to the severance point. ‘My mind is fracturing,’ she thought frantically, deep inside where the pain couldn't touch. ‘He's finally, finally, decided to take his magic back, after waiting for so long, letting it fester, eating away at me.’ Just when she thought she would go mad with the pain, it finally snapped back, ebbed, and gave her a moment’s reprieve. She tasted copper in her mouth, opened her eyes, and looked at herself. The spiderweb of crackling green magic was not as painful to behold. Her eyes had adjusted, and morbidly, she needed to see the damage. Needed to see how bad it was.

Her arm was gone. ( _'It is long gone,'_ a voice deep inside of her said, but she could not understand it.)

The false arm was luridly green, Fade-pulsing and realistic. She was repulsed by it, but she flexed it experimentally. The fingers responded, and their lights danced around her face. It hurt like hell, and it felt wrong, _wrong_ , **_wrong_**. She turned them over and thought her fingertips look razor sharp, like they might rend flesh in a fight. 

‘Like a demon’s,’ she thought, and she looked away, sickened. 

She focused around her and realised that she recognised the room. Haven. She was in her old hut at Haven. She looked at the strappy, sleeveless nightgown that she wore. There were tiny embroidered geometric designs in the hemline, and the neckline was scandalously low. It was surely part of some important lady’s dowry; no Dalish would ever wear something so ridiculous. But she was now the Herald of Andraste. Diplomatic gifts were pouring in. Somewhere along the way, she had found she liked soft cotton nightgowns and a warm, cozy cot. It was no aravel, but she remembered thinking early on that if the shems were eventually going to kill her, she might as well get a comfortable night’s rest.

She remembered that this gown would end up torn to shreds in a night-time rift battle somewhere, but right now, it looked well enough. She felt safer here than she had in a long time. She couldn’t fathom why that should be. Hadn't something awful happened here?

She walked around the room, taking in the chest, the tiny table, and the armour in the corner. She felt more at ease than she had in months. The memory of a huge fortress wriggled in the back of her mind, with its windy balcony and dark nights of pleasure, but she shoved it all away. Everything was simpler here. Nothing really bad had happened yet. She wanted to stay.

She forgot the hand and her arm. She wanted Flissa’s breakfasts and her food for the first time in weeks, suddenly overcome with a ravenous need for food when before, there had been nothing but an empty hollow and no desire to fill it. Her shoulder began to ache. She rubbed at it absently, but as she looked down, she saw spindly green lines of magic inching their way upwards. She looked down in horror as they moved over her ribcage, finding a pathway to her left breast, then up and over, further into her chest. A gathering pressure built, and a fierce new pain began to pierce through her shoulder blades and into her heart.

She barely had enough breath to scream before a fresh wave of agony ripped into her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one is more surprised than me that I'm writing this so quickly. Short chapters ftw, I guess.


	6. Chapter 6

When Lavellan didn’t appear at breakfast, no one was very surprised. Leliana motioned to a servant to take the specially prepared tray of the new Dalish-style morning foods to her room, looking over the options one last time.

“’Always hungry, but never starving’, is how Her Worship put the Dalish to me,” said the cook sternly. “She said Dalish porridge is ground oats mixed with some water and halla milk, and that’s all they eat before they head off for the day. We don’t have none of them strange halla beasts, so I used sweet goat’s milk. And I put some honey and some berries and nuts on the side, in case she wants ‘em. Who eats porridge without somethin’ to sweeten’ it up, ‘eh? Dalish traditions, pah! And she needs some fattening up!”

The cook’s face was mulish, and the tray was laden with so much more. Rashers of bacon, links of sausage, fancy slices of melon and oranges, and more of the ubiquitous Antivan white tea weighed it down. Liliana smiled.

“I’m sure the Inquisitor will be delighted.”

The cook’s face said more than words as she passed the tray and pursed her lips. Nothing could hurt the poor, heavy-set Fereldan more than the ever-growing portions that Lavellan had returned, day after day, week after week. ‘Ever since the Exalted Council,’ thought Leliana. When the servant returned and whispered urgently into the spymaster’s ear, Leliana smiled courteously into Baron and Baronness deLancre’s masked faces, introduced them sweetly to courtiers banqueting in the Great Hall, and moved without hurry towards the Inquisitor’s chambers.

“Get to Cullen and do it discreetly,” she murmured to Jaq, Lavellan’s day servant standing guard at the entrance to her chambers, and one of Leliana’s most trusted elven spies. “When you find him, give him one word: _shadowheart_. He’ll know what to do.”

She entered the passageway, and all of the hair on the back of her neck lifted. She felt the instinctive alarms that had been growing for months coalescing into a honed blade. It was somewhere in the shadows, somewhere she couldn’t see, but she knew it was pointed squarely at their backs. Entering the bedroom, she saw Lavellan laying on her side, her slim elven form illuminated in a hazy green glow that Leliana recognised all too well.

‘Impossible,’ she thought. ‘It’s gone.’

Cautiously, she approached the Inquisitor, whose small form somehow seemed further diminished when in a simple cotton night dress. Even now, an unanswered question swirled about the spymaster’s heart: was this truly the Herald of Andraste?

She remembered what Lavellan had told her about Justinia’s appearance in the Fade. She still didn’t know what to make of the spirit that Lavellan and the others had spoken with, whether it was Justinia or some clever demon masquerading for some hidden agenda, but she knew one thing for certain: Justinia had believed this Dalish nobody was worth saving, even at the cost of her own life. It was just as she had believed, so long ago, that a young Orlesian bard, in over her head, was worthy of help and redemption, even if she had no real proof to guide her. Justinia had been right: Lavellan had proven over and over that her loyalty to Thedas was absolute.

So when the elf in the bed before her screamed and began to claw at her chest, Leliana didn’t hesitate to put herself forward. She didn’t stop to consider what the green glow might signify, or why Lavellan was screaming. She just knew her friend and leader was in trouble, and she wasn’t going to just stand by and watch.

Her distorted scream joined Lavellan’s as Cullen, Josephine, and Jaq burst in, only to stare in a moment of horrified fascination at the tableau set before them. Leliana cried out again, and Cullen snapped to attention, pulling the two apart. Lavellan collapsed back to the bed, insentient and moaning. Leliana fell onto the floor, stunned and staring at her fingers.

“Inquisitor! What is happening to her?” said Josephine, moving towards her, and Leliana quickly said, “Josie, don’t touch her!”

She cradled her hand to her chest in shock. Jaq quickly ran their fingers through a subtle pouch of vials. As one, they stared at Leliana’s hand, shocked to see the bard’s fingers and thumb of her right hand were nearly severed. The fingertips were hanging by slivers of gristle, and her ligaments and delicate bones were fully exposed. Her palm was torn in a pattern, as though something with razor sharp claws had ripped it open. Jaq grabbed their spymaster’s wrist quickly and pressing hard to stem the splurting bleeding. They quickly uncorked a vial of concentrated liquidised elfroot with their teeth.

“Drink.”

It was the first order Jaq had ever given their master, but Leliana was looking whiter than they had ever seen. Her luminous eyes, always so knowing, were unfocused. When she didn’t respond, Jaq brought the slim vial to Leliana’s lips, pushed the lip into her mouth, and tilted. It triggered the drinking response, and Leliana drank. As the potent painkiller and restorative began its work, Jaq snapped their fingers at Leliana’s face.

“This won’t feel good, but you want to play your guitar again, yes?”

Leliana blinked, then seemed to recover herself. She nodded once at Jaq, who grinned.

“There you are.”

“Here I am,” she echoed, this time with a cooler confidence.

“Come over to the desk? I’ll set you to rights.”

While Jaq began the painful process of moving the fingers back into place and feeding Leliana more painkiller, Cullen and Josephine stared at the writhing body of the Inquisitor on the bed.

“Don’t go near her, either of you,” hissed Leliana from the desk, wincing as Jaq manoeuvred and wriggled tiny bones into place. She tried not to look, told herself that she’d seen worse and ordered fouler deeds, but it was impossible to disassociate. _Her hand, her hand…_

“Is it the mark?” Josephine said with fear. “I thought it was gone!”

“That damned elf,” growled Cullen. “Why should we have believed that it was gone, just because he said he took it back?”

On the bed, the Inquisitor writhed, and the familiar glow of the mark radiated from her body. From the elbow down, a green arm appeared, its colours roiling in patterns that hurt the eye to behold for more than a few moments. Where it attached to skin, it looked ragged but seamless, but as they watched her scream, it seemed to dissipate like mist before a suddenly blazing sun. Leliana approached cautiously, her injured hand carefully cradled against her chest. It was wrapped in a makeshift bandage, and her face was paler than winter snow. She stared down at the Inquisitor and said to Cullen, “Fetch a pitcher of water, please.”

“What?”

“Cullen, please just do it!”

Josie moved to assess her, to lend her some strength, but Leliana shook her head. There would be time later to assess her physical damage properly, but for now, there was work to be done. Saying a prayer to the Maker, she took the pitcher from Cullen and tossed the water into the Inquisitor’s face.

Lavellan awoke immediately with a wicked curse and a shout, sitting up in a freezing cold room, and stared at her advisors and their pinched white faces. They looked back at her as though they expected a demon to erupt from her at any moment.

She looked down and saw a blade at her neck.

She licked her dry lips, and croaked from a very sore throat, “What the bloody hell is going on here?”

Cullen, holding his sword steady, said with a look of fear and pity in his eyes, “That’s what we’d like to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Jack Sparrow throws a bucket of water on the sleeping Mr. Gibbs.]
> 
> Mr. Gibbs: Curse ya for breathin', ya slack-jawed idiot! [coughs, regains consciousness, and recognizes Jack] Mother's love. Jack! You should know better than to wake a man when he's sleepin'. It's bad luck!
> 
> Jack Sparrow: [smug] Fortunately, I know how to counter it: The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink; the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking.
> 
> Mr. Gibbs: [pauses, works through the bullshit] Aye, that'll about do it.
> 
> [Will Turner throws more water on Mr. Gibbs.]
> 
> Mr. Gibbs: Blast, I'm already awake!
> 
> Will Turner: That was for the smell.
> 
> Mr. Gibbs: [pauses, then shrugs in agreement]
> 
> \---
> 
> Actual author note: Jaq is non-binary, for those who may be confused by the pronoun shifting.


	7. Chapter 7

She really felt she’d come full circle when she woke again, this time inside a cell, but if it was in Skyhold, it was a part she didn’t recognise. These weren’t her dungeons – at least, not ones she'd ever seen. For want of familiarity, she petted the walls again and reached out to take a few nibbles from the little metal bowl Jaq left. The porridge had long gone cold, but new beggars couldn’t be choosers. She ate with her right hand, scooping it up like the old days, and sighing with some pleasure at least that her belly felt pleasantly full. She hadn’t felt like eating in so long, but now she was ravenous. Curious that, but she didn’t dwell on it, for there were some bigger halla to herd, like whether she had become an abomination.

’Just little things,’ she thought. 

But deep down, where she was truly terrified, she was thinking, why now? Why her, and why now? After all this time, after the war to defeat Corypheus, the pain and the suffering she and her Inquisition endured... why would she succumb to demon possession now? And wouldn't she know it, if she was possessed? She thought back on the days since the Exalted Council. Her mood had certainly been terrible. But did that really make her an abomination? She thought about the bandages she saw on Leliana's hand and the terrorised look on Josephine's face. She remembered that dark look of judgement on Cullen's. Abomination? Her? What would even be the point?

“He said the point was to make us despair, to see ourselves as animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility of love.” 

She wasn’t surprised to see him in the shadows across her. One moment, there was just a pale darkness, and the next, a young man sat with gangly arms and crossed legs, his feet tucked into slightly upturned pointed slippers, silent in battle, but amusing to kittens. 

“But he believed in love, and his sacrifice was made with love. And so the girl forgot everything, and she lived happily ever after. The end!” He said it with the simplicity of a child reciting a nursery rhyme. Although she didn’t know this story, the hairs on the back of her neck still rose.

“Hello Cole.”

“Hullo!” he replied, as though they were meeting in his little alcove over the tavern, and not in the straw in a cell somewhere, with an enchanted chain around her ankle. ’It’s best just to ask a spirit these things,’ she thought. ‘And if I am, he’s the best one to put me out of my misery,’ she concluded, with heavy dash of hopeful cynicism.

“Do you think I’m an abomination?” 

He squinted at her and said, “Too bright.”

She blinked, but Josie’s patiently firm lectures must have sunk into her at last. She had grown used to the gloominess in her present accommodations, but she found herself gracefully apologising for what she assumed was the excessive lighting from braziers on the walls outside of her cell. He shook his head, making his hat flap around like a large bird.

“You’ve changed, and there’s so much more of you now,” he said, and then huffed when he seemed to run out of the right words. She waited patiently, resisting the urge to nudge him. He stared at her with unblinking pale blue eyes, unnerving and still, which felt closer to undead than truly alive.

“In the Waking world or across the Dreaming sea, like the morning star, never fading. Burning, flaring, a song in a flame across time and space. You hold a secret. Too valuable for barter or trade. No spirit can ever hope to entrap you. No demon would ever dare try. You’re just too big now.”

The former spirit, still less than human, but better than any shem she had ever known, smiled so gently, so compassionately, that her eyes filled with tears. She had been holding her breath, wondering if he would tell her that she was riddled with a terrible demon, maybe a hundred terrible demons, and the relief he brought was like a dragon kick to her belly. And she would know. 

A little hiccup escaped, a tiny wail, and she was holding her hand over her mouth. She didn’t mean to cry. It wasn’t something she ever did. They stared at each other, the elf girl from the Free Marches, and the spirit boy who was once Compassion. She shook her head, thinking maybe he was Mercy on this side of the Veil. Maybe he was lying before he sank his hidden blades into her sides. She had seen the results of his attacks so many times, but was never certain of how he did them. 

“Tricks of the trade,” Varric had said with approval. Leliana had nodded with something like pride.

He reached over and took the tears that spill from her eyes; looking down, he licked them from his fingertips. He had never done anything like that before. She stared at him, her mouth dropped open behind her hand.

“He remembers your salt, dreams of it every night, and misses it. I wanted to know why. It just tastes like salt. How strange.”

He smiled with such loving compassion and continued, “The sad wolf would swallow you whole to keep your brightness inside, keep you safe, keep him warm, but even his jaws can only open so much.”

She snapped out of her reverie and grabbed Cole’s shoulder.

“Cole please, what do you know? What is Solas planning?”

In the back of her mind, she quietly marvelled that she still cared so deeply about Thedas when she was currently rotting in a cell. Meanwhile, her Inquisition sat somewhere nearby, thinking who knew what. Maybe they were wondering if they were going to harrow her, or use her as political bait, or any number of other possibilities other than believe what Cole is saying. And yet, she shook his shoulders, less gently than she might have. He drooped.

“He won’t talk to me anymore. His doors are locked. The mice do not play on the mouse organ. ‘I will fix it!’ the sad wolf cries! But then, there will be no more Emilys.” 

Lavellan saw the tears escape the spirit boy who was deeply missing his friend, the only one in their group who really, truly understood him, and accepted him fully from the very beginning. She threw her arms around him, offering him all the comfort she had. He was startled, but gradually, a gentle hug was returned. Empathy and Sympathy were close to Compassion; it must have been the physical manifestation that threw him off guard. Together, they wept a little, and temporarily, their sorrows were lessened. 

She refrained from drinking his tears, and he did not take any more of hers. Both of their shirts were wet when a clacking sound alerted her to the return of someone into the hallway connecting to her cell. She dried her tears as best as she could, standing up and holding onto a few thoughts.

Either she was the Inquisitor, or she wasn't.

Either she was an abomination, or she wasn't.

Either they were going to kill her, or they weren't. 

When she turned to thank Cole, he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter twice. It was being an absolute bastard. 
> 
> Then Cole popped up, and everything was right as rain.
> 
> Bonus points for guessing his references.


	8. Chapter 8

The door was unlocked, and her back was proud when Leliana and Divine Victoria entered. Lavellan shook her head as she thought, ‘Should I be on my knees? No. Never again. Never, ever again shall the People kneel.’

“Where am I?” she demanded. It was the first time she had seen anyone since being brought from her bed, bound and hooded. They had only allowed her enough time to dress.

“In a safe place,” replied Leliana. “Until we can ascertain whether _you_ are safe.”

Lavellan wanted to scoff, but glancing at Leliana’s bound hand, the words died in her throat. “Your hand,” she began. “I don’t… I don’t recall what happened. Are you all right?” She searched her friend’s face, and was met with a blank response, the famous cold facade of the Nightingale. There was no warmth to her eyes, and no hint of compassion to her countenance. She looked at Lavellan as a specimen… or a traitor.

“What do you recall, Inquisitor?” asked Divine Victoria. Her low voice was soothing, but firm. A contrast to the first time they had met in Haven, so long ago it felt like a lifetime.

Haven.

“A dream of Haven,” she said, looking at her old companions. “My old hut. It was morning. And then pain.” She cupped the stump of her left arm, and winced with phantom pain.

“You were screaming,” said Leliana. “But your arm, it was strange. Glowing, like the mark had returned.”

Lavellan looked at her in confusion, saying, “It’s gone. Solas took it.”

“Is it really? What can we truly believe of him?” Divine Victoria’s brown eyes were hard and unyielding. “Everything he has ever said and done is now suspect.”

“My arm is half gone, Cassandra! What more proof do you need?”

Leliana held up her bandaged hand. “You ripped up this one near to pieces with your lost hand, and it was made of… something. It glowed like the mark. You were screaming in your sleep, and when you awoke, it was gone.”

Lavellan stared at Leliana’s hand in confusion and horror. Divine Victoria said, “We must understand what is happening. The Inquisition serves us now, and the reforms we push through the Chantry and the Seekers will crumble if the Inquisitor should be less than what she appears.”

“Will you really harrow me?” said Lavellan, her chest pierced with sorrow and disbelief. Leliana pierced her gaze as she lowered her wounded hand.

“Give us another option. Anything to help us understand what is happening to you.”

Lavellan hung her head for a moment, then lifted it with a sharpness of power and determination.

“If I agree to this, and it seems I have little choice, Cullen and the Divine will act as my Templars. And when I pass – _and I will pass, mark me_ – I will seek answers my way.”

She looked at Leliana and said, “I am truly sorry for what I did to you. I have no memory of it, but if I could take it back, I would. I am so sorry, Leliana.”

If Leliana’s gaze softened, it might have been only a trick of the flickering torchlight. Nevertheless, she nodded. Around the room, the gazes hardened, and Lavellan found herself back where she had been, so long ago at Haven, her fate in the hands of a Nevarran warrior princess. How bitter she felt, and let it show in her face for just a moment, before pulling it all inside where the rest of the pieces of her shattered spirit lay haunted in the frozen wasteland of Haven.

“Tonight then, Inquisitor. Prepare yourself. Maker be with you.” 

Divine Victoria’s words were a cold comfort to the elf, who neither believed in the Maker, nor could track the time of day from the windowless cell. Having nothing better to do, she tucked herself into the cot and slept.

\---

She walked in Haven in her dream, up the steps to the little hut on the right. Disappointment filled her. He wasn’t outside, staring at the Breach and fiddling with his strange amulet. _Where was he?_ She wandered around the back of Adan’s hut, picking the elfroot as she went and tucking the precious leaves into her pouch. The familiar foraging route was soothing to her, but her real prey was a certain apostate elf, who was strangely absent. 

_Perhaps he had been sent on a secret mission?_ She frowned. _Then why hadn't she been informed?_ She stalked over and found Leliana’s tent curiously empty, but missives and maps were neatly laid about, held down by rocks, weapons, or the edges of raven cages. She rifled through all of it, looking for clues. The words slid around strangely, refusing to stick to the parchment. Her eyes became unfocused the more she attempted to read, and her head began to hurt. She heard booming laughter from Varric’s firepit. Brightening, she dropped the papers and ran over to hear her friend’s latest gossip.

Nothing. The dwarf was nowhere to be seen. 

Becoming more frustrated by the moment, she found herself outside of Taigen’s old cottage. She looked around, confused, but the trees had closed in around her. The path was gone, and the snow had begun to fall. She stared at the old apothecary’s cottage. Swallowing, she took in the disrepair of the roof, the loneliness of its location, and the sad state of the garden. She could see where royal elfroot, embrium, and spindleweed once grew in neat rows, but all now struggled for dominance in wild patches. Looking up at the door, she felt a tingling in her arm. A resonance behind her chest began to gather. She rubbed at it absently as she walked closer to the door. 

It appeared no closer to her, no matter how many steps she took.

Frustrated, she walked faster. Her arm ached ever more fiercely, and as she took note of it, she looked down. It glowed as green as the mark. _As Leliana had said_ , somewhere her mind reminded her, but the pain lessened as she took in the wonder of her arm. 

Green and shining, it glittered with a swirl of colours that reminded her of the rifts. She admired it, a dormant part of her now fully awake and lazily soaking in the spark. She turned to the troublesome door, held her shining arm forth, and walked forward. She heard a shattering in the clouds, a break in the moon, a chorus of howls in the woods. She was cold, so cold. She wanted to be warm again.

She pushed the door open.

She shrieked, falling forwards, upside and into a warm place. A bed.

The look on his face was worth the pain in her arm and torso. She ceased debating whether it was worth in the bruise to her face and wrench of her neck when she murmured with no small amount of satisfaction, “I suspect you have questions.”


	9. Chapter 9

His startled eyes had narrowed, and he was gone from beneath her so quickly that she could not be certain she had seen his reaction; she had nearly fallen off the bed in his haste. He stood turned away from the bed, and she saw the impression of a desk beyond. Sumptuous tapestries and murals lined stone walls, and a banked fireplace glowed nearby, from which veilfire eerily illuminated, casting little light and no heat. 

“Leave now, Spirit. I know not how you came here, but I ask you to depart in peace.”

She regarded him carefully, lifting herself up on shaking arms and trembling knees. The coldness in his voice underlay the hostility in the air. Though he attempted to convey neutrality, he had been caught entirely unbalanced. 

“Wait – what?” she began. She watched as his head turned and their gazes caught; his eyes glowed for a moment, but then they narrowed with suspicion, sliding into near loathing. Abruptly, he turned aside, his face cooling to neutrality. He offered only the profile of his stiffened back, his arms coming to rest behind in that infuriatingly poised posture of a lord at court.

Or an Evanuris in judgement.

The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact he was bare chest and clad with dark leggings, his strange amulet hanging as ever from his neck. Nevertheless, his jaw was straight and proud, and she felt all at once small, naked, and pronounced unworthy. Her nostrils flared in anger. What had _she_ ever done to _him_ to deserve that look of haughty disdain painted across his lofty brow? 

“Spirit?” she said, in a low tone of pure indignation. She took her time to clear a path out of the soft blankets and outrageously fluffy pillows. He looked at her for a moment, and in the silence that followed, seemed at a loss as to what to do.

“Belatedly, I realise I must have inadvertently drawn you near, though I cannot see how you penetrated my wards. Nevertheless, accept this offering: that I regret that I do not have time for a Spirit of Frustration - and go in peace.” He inclined his head, and with heavy solemnity, he raised his eyebrows as if it pained him to acknowledge her.

She threw a pillow at him. She enjoyed how he let out a mortifying little squeak when his arms went up. She bet he hadn’t done that in thousands of years, so she threw another. This time his barrier was cast, and he glared at her from behind it. She looked for more ammunition.

“I’m not—!” 

She threw a feather bolster. _Some Dread Wolf – he’s such a godsdamned lush,_ she thought.

“One of your precious—!”

She threw a thin scented candle from its stand. _Wants to burn the world, but stocks up on Orlesian tapers first!_

“Fucking Spirits!”

She turned around to throw her next found object – a truly beautiful, superbly crafted, spirit rune. Had Dagna made this one? Had her Inquisition fought countless Terrors from hundreds of rifts just to pull enough spirit essences for a precious number of these, to boost a handful of his staffs? And where was all the dragon armour she had made for him? She was going to deal with him, and then get that back! Such were the thoughts fuelling her rage, crackling the edges of her skin as it crumbled away, the pain forgotten as raw green energy crackled around her. She grabbed the rune, and found her arm being held by an immovable force. She looked up, and saw her target had disappeared. Right, left, no —

Behind her, a dark, displeased tenor murmured into her ear.

“Drop my paper weight, Spirit.”

 _Paper weight???_

Oh, the unbelievable git.

How had he moved so fast? She couldn’t turn her head anymore, nor move any of her limbs. She could only wriggle the fingers of her hand. He had such exquisite control. She stared at her left hand. Her pulsating, green hand. She felt a familiar power building in her, and gasped as it moved. It felt as though she were being torn apart, but as she instinctively gripped the rune, the power began to flow inside of her, like a seed that had long ago taken root. From her hand to her arm, past her heart and deep into her chest, the power sucked away at the rune. Her face felt hot, as though she stood in front of Harritt’s and Dagna’s forge. She felt the rune shatter in her hand as something ripped deep inside of her. Sobbing in pain, she wrenched herself in his arms and took a sick satisfaction in seeing his pale face and wide, storm-grey eyes. Savagely, she pushed him back onto the bed, and leaping onto his chest, held her clawed hand over his face, ready to strike true.

“You never were any good at hearing what you didn’t want to know. _Dirthara-ma!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Shameika said I had potential." - Fiona Apple, "Shameika"
> 
> #blacklivesmatter


	10. Chapter 10

It wasn’t how she’d dreamt of getting him under her again. As much as had she tried to exorcise him from her thoughts, memories and desire ignited like touchpaper at the feel of his body, and it streaked through her spirit like a comet in the sky.

 _Thedas first_.

She had turned it into a mantra in the months since he had torn her arm away. She would find her nearest advisor and demand, "What's next?", whenever she had felt lonely or worried for her former lover. She would set her shoulders back, and focus on countering his next move. Or, gods and demons and whatever else might be watching, maybe gain a few steps ahead of him.

She clawed at him desperately, hoping against all odds that she might somehow hurt him now, maybe even fatally. Maybe this might be her only chance. _Thedas first_ , she told herself, as her heart fractured and cleaved again.

“Enough!” 

Straining, he held her wrists above his face, the frustration carved in the lines of his cheekbones, and the grim set of his teeth. 

“Feel how I feel, and know what I know. Take this Spirit, be satisfied, and away with you!”

A wellspring of hot mana began to curl around her, infused with an intensity of green fire. It slipped into her, and connected them in a moment that lasted for just a second, or a lifetime. She felt a heartbeat pulse in her vein, a twin echo, a strain of music. His was a song that sounded strained, almost broken, like an Orlesian waltz being played out of beat, where all the players were forced to compensate, and all the dancers had to guess how next to move. There were masks everywhere on the players, on the dancers, and everyone was pretending nothing was amiss. His song was searching for something inside of her, reaching for chords and cadence to resonate. Like a tuning fork being struck, it found her, and _aligned_.

Across an ancient, bronzed ballroom of a Faded memory, they stared at each other.

“You,” he breathed. She saw him, and a man inside him, blurring in and out of her vision. 

She said, “Who is that with you?”

His face was aghast, eyes wide with astonishment. “You cannot be here.” He moved an arm, and the man moved in concert. She stepped forward, and he moved backwards, coming against a mosaiced wall of glittering bronze. 

“Wake up!”

She curled her lip, snarling, then looked above him. The icon of Mythal, gleaming and terrifying, gazed out over the ballroom. _Of course._ She looked around her, watching as ancient elvhen lounged, danced, and played. Music was becoming warmer as the memory filled. She opened her mouth to say something cutting to Solas, but watched in surprise as the something - the indistinct pattern of a man - detached from him. As it departed, it gained clearer form, walking towards a dais set at the far end of the ballroom.

‘Like the Winter Palace,’ she realised. ‘It’s just like the Winter Palace.’ Then she mentally kicked herself as she reversed the order of construction, marvelling again at just how much her people had lost when the humans had broken their promise and taken back the Dales. 

The man’s hair was simple, unlike all the elaborate hairstyles around him. It flowed in a parting and down to the centre of his back, straight, combed, and unbound by jewellery. His clothing appeared modest but formal, and it covered his body from neck to wrist and ankle. He wore plain brown leggings and a comfortable looking white tunic, and though there were no embroidered patterns or jewels embedded in the design, it looked well made. Unlike the others swirling around in a dizzying array of sandals and heeled boots, his feet were bare but for foot wrappings. He walked with grace. His head was neither bowed nor proud, and his hands were loosely by his side. Those who came across his path inclined their heads with respect, which he returned. 

She knew those shoulders. The slant of those ears. But though she wanted to recognise the gentle, unassuming way in which he walked, she was struck by the difference between the facsimile she had seen in Haven, and the memory she was seeing play out here, in the Fade. It was the little differences that gave it all away. She needed to see his face. It would be the final confirmation. She tried to move forward, but Solas caught her arm.

“No.”

Firm and yet pleading, he tried to wrench her back. She stared at his hand where it touched her. On her left arm, pulsing with the spitting, green fire of Fade light and pain. When she pushed him away from her, determined to run to see what he was so determined to hide, he shook his head.

“Keep your hands off me, harellan!”

“Do not make me destroy you, vhenan. Death in the Fade is very dangerous.”

“When have I ever made you do anything?” Her voice hissed with rage. “If you choose to destroy me, at least take responsibility for it!”

The music stopped, and she turned aside to see what had caused the silence. A dark-haired elvhen woman stood at the dais. Her face was implacable, without a hint of a smile or a shine of joy in her eyes. 

“Athimathe,” she said with a tone that bordered on accusation. “You are late.”

“Apologies,” the man before her replied. His gentle tenor was unmistakeable and sweet. Lavellan’s heart ached, and she felt tears gather. “I was with Wisdom, delighting in a forgotten memory. I am here now.”

“Kneel.”

Without hesitation, he did. 

“Why do you seek Wisdom? Have I not always provided all you require so that you should know what is true, and what is not?” 

“Wisdom is its own reward,” he replied. “I seek to understand my limitations, so that I may continue to honour and serve only you.”

“Prettily spoken. Take great care that you do not stray from your purpose. It is a worthy goal, but never forget who you serve.”

He bowed his head in acquiescence, and accepted her blessing. At her command, he rose to his feet. When he turned to face the crowd, she saw his face, decorated with the tree of Mythal.

‘So his hair is just brown, with a tiny bit of auburn. Nothing special. Varric’s is much prettier.’ She ignored the taste of tears and ashes on her tongue as a hand like iron gripped her shoulder, and a low chant of unfamiliar Elvhen filled the air around her.

“Wait, I have questions—”

He snarled, and the whole world changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I understand the point. We're going to South Carolina to set up Illinois. When I ask, "What's next?", it means that I'm ready to move on to other things. So, what's next?" - President Josiah Bartlet, 'In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part 2', "The West Wing" (written by Aaron Sorkin)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: drug use

She awoke on the cold floor of her cell, shivering and sneezing. Her entire body ached as though she had been running through the woods all night, or been crawling through enemy territory for days without food or shelter. Her ribs felt like they had been battered and bruised, and she could barely lift her head without feeling the room spin. She groaned as the door to the cell opened.

“It’s time."

Cullen didn’t move to help or touch her. She looked through her grimy hair and stared at him with incredulity, unable to comprehend him. She stood painfully slowly, taking her time to pull herself together. The chain attached to her feet rattled and pulled. She stiffened as Cassandra appeared with a secondary set of enchanted manacles.

“Those are unnecessary,” Lavellan said. “I come willingly.”

She held the Divine’s eyes, and after a moment, Cassandra nodded to Cullen, whose eyes softened in relief. He knelt in the straw, unfastened the Inquisitor’s shackle, and winced as he saw the raw, broken skin at her ankle. Together they left the chamber, following Leliana and Jaq, who waited just outside in an unfamiliar corridor. 

“Where am I?”

“In the Hunterhorns, at a secure location,” replied the Divine. 

“Safe,” added Cullen.

“And what stories have been spun to explain my sudden absence?”

“None,” Leliana said, turning them into a massive room that featured in its centre the Seeker emblem embedded into the floor. The walls were decorated with the insignia of the Seekers: the all-seeing white eye upon a field of black. Small windows were covered with plain but well-made wooden shutters, and a roaring fire had been lit in the huge grate at the end of the room. 

“The Seekers have not done this in some time,” said Cassandra, “but it is in this room that we have seen Tranquility broken in some. I should think that testing you for demonic possession will not be an issue here.”

Lavellan watched as Leliana, Jaq, Cassandra, and Cullen took their places around the emblem of the Seeker. Taking her cue, she squared her shoulders, stepped into the centre, and stood upon the white eye. Her friends felt very far away. She turned to look into each of their faces.

“Cullen,” she said quietly. “Whatever happens, I want you to know that I understand.” His face was hard, but his eyes betrayed his pain and more. She quickly looked away, turning next to her spymaster, then Jaq and Cassandra in turns.

“I am sorry that your faith in me has become tested this way. Whatever comes next, I want you to know that from the beginning, Thedas has always come first, and always will.”

Leliana’s face remained passive, betraying nothing of her feelings, but she bowed her head to her leader. It was more than enough. Lavellan turned to Jaq and smiled. “I am truly glad you are here. Thank you for witnessing, and for standing where others might dread to follow.” Jaq’s eyes glittered, and they nodded. Finally, she turned to Cassandra. “I am ready. Whatever happens, the Inquisition serves the Divine. We will protect Thedas. Always.” Cassandra’s face was tight with grief, but without further words of encouragement or hesitation, the Divine activated her power to annul magic, and blasted it without mercy at Lavellan. 

The pain was instantaneous, and felt like her entire body was suddenly boiling from the inside. Her scream echoed through the room, and she pitched forward, unable to withstand the agony. She felt herself vibrating, and heard a sound like music being abruptly cut off. A familiar voice was calling her name, somewhere in a place that felt like a dream, but she could only taste ashes and tears, and could not respond.

Then the Divine called the wrath of the Maker, and the Inquisitor was struck by a pillar of light so bright, all had to turn their eyes away as the effect took hold. Lavellan’s shriek was lost in the boom of the sudden thunderclap, and her body lifted from the ground as the convulsion took her.

“Quickly!” Leliana cried, and Cullen tilted Lavellan’s head up while Jaq carefully forced her lips open, dribbling the lyrium into her mouth and massaging her throat to encourage swallowing. Lavellan’s eyes were rolled back, unresponsive, and Cullen cursed while Jaq continued to try to administer the dose. The precious blue liquid trailed out of her mouth and onto her shirt.

“She's going to aspirate."

“We need to inject,” Leliana grimly replied. 

He grabbed Jaq’s kit and quickly rigged Lavellan’s arm. He took up the prepared syringe, his hands steadier than he would have expected. Finding a vein, he gently slipped the needle in, and slowly pushed the plunger down, releasing the rig. The old ritual was so familiar, it was almost soothing, especially after the terror of watching her smite. He could only hope that she was disconnected from whatever had possessed her, and was now in the Fade and fighting it off. He checked her eyes and watched her pupils dilate. 

“It’s done,” he said gruffly. 

Standing up, he shoved himself away, and walked to a nearby pitcher and basin set at a table, where he furiously washed his hands. Looking back at his companions and the Inquisitor laid out on the floor, he snarled, and threw the crockery against the stone wall.

\---

A soul of pure green fire shot across the Fade, piercing the primeval waves. It screamed across the spinning stones and broken columns of the Dreaming Sea, past the empty throne in the Black City, and to the edge of the Void. The spirits of the realm trembled, for it stirred the great black wolf. It knew that voice. It had heard its cry and answered in a howl across immeasurable distance. The wolf jumped across the demesnes with every running step, moving at speed with its many red eyes fixed upon the shining star of the soul.

The soul wandered the wastes for a time, wounded, and weary. It wished for the warp and weft, for hearts and bones. At times, a noise left it, a familiar music or call. A ghostly moan of pain and sorrow. It shimmered, as though in great agony. At last, the great wolf appeared, and though its the red eyes narrowed against the brilliance of the soul, its radiance drew it closer. The wolf stalked, waiting to pounce, but the soul, battered and exhausted, moved to twine itself against the wolf’s dark fur, sighing in shuddering weeping, as though it still had tears or breath. The wolf pulled away in surprise, unsure and unwilling to savour its first gentle touch in aeons, but the soul reached out and smoothed the unruly locks near its snarling teeth, daring to pet and caress its great head, in contrast to all who had fled in gibbering terror before.

Then the soul flared ever brighter in its suffering and anguish, and wisps of curiosity and fascination gathered, only to be banished by guttural growls of warning and dismissal.

Sympathy and rage lit the wolf’s heart, but it gently murmured, “Who has done this to you, vhenan?” 

The soul intertwined itself tightly against his neck, holding on as the wolf’s great face came close. The soul’s moan was a shiver in the woods. A whisper on the wind. 

But of words, there were none.

The great wolf contented itself to hold her in its shadow, curling around her as she buried herself in the folds of its paws. 

Secure. Hidden.

“Rest,” it intoned. “For so long as you are here, you are safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The arc of a love affair  
> His hands rolling down her hair  
> Love like lightning shaking till it moans  
> Hearts and bones"
> 
> Paul Simon, _Hearts and Bones_


	12. Chapter 12

Awareness came slowly. She watched the edges of her form twine in and out of the curls of darkness surrounding her. It was a blackness so deep and strange, behaving like a living thing, crawling into her mist with spindly fingers, seeking her warmth and light. She blinked, and the vision faded; it was merely fur again, resting gently around her. A kaleidoscope of pain and energy filled her as she stretched. A feeling of fear and safety warred within her in a jangle of cognitive dissonance.

Where was she? 

What was she doing here?

Was she dead? 

Panic suddenly seized her, and she flailed for a moment.

“Peace,” rumbled a great maw above her. An array of red and white eyes peeped out of a massive head in a show of slitted awareness. To her dawning horror and fascination, she found herself standing somewhere between its teeth and paws. Behind her, a massive tail curled.

Trapped. 

A yawn escaped the great mouth, and she stared in mute shock at the sheer number of sharp, angled teeth, and the darkness painting its gullet.

‘It could eat the world,’ she thought numbly.

“Hardly,” came the haughty reply.

She trembled. 

“Am I dead?”

A growl escaped the creature, low and deadly. Its tail lashed the air, sending a miasma of twinkling multi-coloured faelights glowing into the sickly-green aether.

“No.”

A world of anger and promise in that word. It hung in the feral edge of its mouth, in the glistening points of its teeth. A single drop of saliva dripped from its tongue, and it swallowed, shaking its head. Its eyes, half-hooded and fierce, remained trained upon her. The aether was filled with a promise: if she was to die, it would be by this creature’s permission, or not at all.

She tried to remember what had happened to her – her name, her history – but hurting remembered, and so she looked at the creature and tried instead to explain.

“I feel different. Like whoever I am, whatever I was, has been melted down, and poured into another vessel. And it might still be me, but all the pieces are jumbled up. And maybe… something might have been changed forever.”

The truth of her words rang in the aether, like the chimes of crystal grace. The air filled with the quiet sound, cooling the heat from the creature’s snarl. Abruptly, she could smell the Emerald Graves. Memories teased her. 

Hands on a staff, twirling above. 

Barriers cast in green. 

Elves painted on stone.

The giggle of a spirit needing more, more, more, and the laughter from a beloved with a scarred brow, bowing to accept a crown of ardent blossoms, if only for a little while.

_He'll remake the world to suit his desires. His chosen to reign._

The creature bowed its head and nosed her very gently.

She twined herself closely, and felt parts of herself falling in and out of a perilous edge, like peeking out over the edge of a cliff. It felt exhilarating and hideous, and she instinctively knew that painful memories sat close by, waiting for her to leap off and find the truth.

“You are in the Fade,” the creature murmured quietly. “You wandered far and wide, and stand at the edge of the Void. And it is all that we can do to keep you from annihilation.”

_Pulling back the curtain. Let the light in. Let it burn._

She pressed harder, and felt an answer in her bones.

“Tell me about your journeys.”

The stillness across the Fade was sweet and ominous.

“Tell me more of yourself.”

A great sigh sounded in the deepest reach of the Fade, and the creature’s eyes closed in exquisite pain.

And then the creature curled tightly around her and began to whisper to her, gently enfolding itself as though around a great treasure, its wards and barriers deep and strong, surrounded by wisps of astonishment and devotion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was utterly obsessed with getting the Ardent Blossom crown. I ended up using it mostly on Cassandra, but only after putting it on Varric or Solas for a while. I was pissed off I couldn't put it on ma boo Bull. (It can only be equipped on elves, dwarves, or humans.)
> 
> Prettiest. Helmet. Ever.


	13. Chapter 13

“Any change?” Cullen asked Leliana at the door to the Inquisitor’s room. Jaq stood by, guarding the entrance, and all three exchanged worried glances. Checking one more time for stragglers in the hallway, the spymaster unlocked the door. 

“Let no one through,” she reminded Jaq, who nodded as they locked the door behind them.

The room was lit by a comforting fire, but it did nothing to stop the chills down the former Templar’s spine as he took in Lavellan’s condition. She lay on the bed, over the coverlets, and dressed in a simple nightgown that barely reached her knees. Only those who knew her well would be able to recognise her, as her body was completely transformed. Not only was her left arm reanimated in the familiar, Fade-pulsing shade of green magic, the rest of her body – from the tips of her hair to the soles of her feet – was entirely changed. She was formed of the Fade, and looking at her made Cullen’s feel as though he was falling into the sky, or staring into the centre of a never-ending spiral. It made him feel queasy, and he could not bear the sensation for more than a few moments. She whispered sometimes in a strange language, but it was nothing that they could understand. There were occasional strings of words or sighs, and sometimes singing. Other times, laments. 

“Maker preserve us,” he choked, looking away. Leliana bowed her head and whispered a prayer to Andraste.

“The Divine is quietly seeking texts – anything at all – that might explain this,” she said, the grief thick and palatable in her voice. “So far, we have found nothing.”

The door opened, and both whirled, ready to defend the Inquisitor at all costs. A knife glinted in Leliana’s good hand, and Cullen had drawn his sword before the intruder had taken a single step into the room. But it was only Cassandra - the Divine Victoria - and the relief that swept through the room gave the leader of the Andrastrian religion pause. Never one to hold her reactions, she glared, her perfect eyebrows stitched into unbelieving arches.

“Do you think I come to harm her? Do you think I would let _anyone_ harm her?”

Sheepishly, they put their weapons away and turned back to look at their friend, incapacitated and glowing in eerie light on the bed.

“I suppose not. But we have harmed her,” said Cullen, grief tightening his voice. “And if this is possession…”

“Despite the harrowing, we still do not know what this is,” said Cassandra, her robes swishing quietly against the stone floor. “And until we do, we must do nothing further.”

“Is there word yet from Nevarra?” asked Leliana, with scant hope in her face.

“None yet from the Mortalitasi. But I hear there is a new librarian at the Mourn Watch, and that he is very good. Perhaps we will have answers soon.” 

“What of Dorian?” asked Cullen. “Is there anything in Tevinter’s archives, anything at all that he might know?”

“We must be cautious in deploying Magister Pavus,” said Cassandra, reminding the room of Dorian’s position. “Any hint of the Inquisitor’s condition in Tevinter will cause ripples far greater than we can contain.”

Cullen ground his teeth, but said nothing further. 

“We will contact him, but we must be very, very careful.” 

“Fiona is on her way from the College of Enchanters,” added Leliana. “Two or three days, perhaps more if the weather turns. She is bringing the one called ‘Your Trainer’. The one who knows about rifts.”

“Has Fiona been told?”

Cullen’s voice was hard. He had never managed to become fully comfortable with Fiona’s allied mages as some others in the Inquisition had, though he had recognised their bravery in closing the Breach before the destruction at Haven. He was much more comfortable siding with Dorian than the head of the College of Enchanters, but both he and Lavellan had shed blood with Dorian in battle. He knew the man, and trusted him. 

“Not yet."

The spymaster stared hard at the Inquistor as Lavellan's face rippled in shining greens and sickening yellows. Cullen looked down at Lavellan and took in her rippling figure. Though unnerving, he remembered his time as a Templar.

“She must eat. She was already making herself weak from malnutrition, and this… whatever this is… it’s only going to make this worse. Mages trapped in the Fade, they cannot survive there for long. They wither. Bodies cannot live without souls.”

Cassandra started, then tried soothing. “We are aware... but it is not possible while she remains unconscious.” 

Leliana clicked a nail against the bedframe, her face a mask. “That’s not entirely true.”

They stared at her, alarmed and aghast.

"I will take care of it.”

“And the lyrium?” Cullen's voice was barely a whisper. Leliana’s mouth hardened. 

“I’ll take care of that too.”

When they left the room, Jaq locked and armed the door, their eyes constantly surveying for threats. They patiently accepted the silent rebuke from their mistress, even as they accepted the gentle smile from the Divine. 

All expected and humbly received from a day’s work.

\---

The glows of Fade-greens and yellows and the fireplace-oranges and reds in the Inquisitor’s room played about in the shadows. One moment the bed was quietly occupied by a sleeping woman, whose lips pursed and sang, then dropped into a mumble of unintelligible murmurs. The next, a young man in a large hat was sitting cross-legged beside to her. There was no hesitation as he picked up her hand, stroking it gently with his other. 

“Falling, fading, finding the sad wolf, the bright one hides in the Dreaming, but only for so long. The mother of black-winged dreams will call to him soon. Catching, catalysing, concealing! The old songs sing through you now, enthralling, embracing, enchanting him… but you must come back, and soon, lethallan.”

He stroked her palm and curled up tightly by her side: a soul-brother, a spirit-kin, and a worried friend.

\---

The Witch of the Wilds walked the dusty interiors of the Elvhen ruins with rich, golden eyes fixed on the present. Her third eye – the mystical eye – gazed on the past. The Well of Sorrows had whispered to her how this was once a private estate of the Dread Wolf, but when she had accosted for more information, there was none. The voices fretted and moaned, been silent or raged, but none could offer her knowledge of what Solas was doing here, or what his plans were. Mythal’s servants could be a veritable fountain of knowledge in some ways, but dry as dust at the most frustrating of moments. As she approached the private wing, the Sentinels at the entrance again refused her entry. The Voices from the Well chittered in her mind, telling her to obey the servants of Mythal, and she silenced them all with a vicious command.

“ _I will speak with your Dread Wolf_ ,” she said in perfect Elvhen, with a near Orlesian balance of disdain and dismissal calculated to set even the most diplomatic person’s teeth on edge. She placed her staff innocently enough by her side, but its meaning could not have been clearer. She sneered.

“ _Little boys, playing soldier, long forgotten how to think for themselves. I credited the ancients with so much more. **Get out of my way.** I’m sure there will be a cannon or two he’ll fling you at, soon enough._” Or, there will be me, her blazing yellow eyes suggested. They bristled and reached for their spears.

“Ignore the shem,” a droll voice called from the shadows, in perfect Common. “She does not, nor will she ever, give orders to the Elvhen.”

She turned to face Abelas, and their eyes locked in familiar battle.

“ _I will speak to him,_ ” she commanded. The Well swelled inside her like a tide, fearful and respectful. She stamped it down with a firm snap.

He stared down at her in undisguised revulsion and hatred. 

“ _You will speak with him when you are summoned, quickling._ ”

“ _And where is he? He’s not been seen for days!_ ” Morrigan cast her voice loud and clear, her arms out in wide supplication. It gave her the perfect chance to watch the Sentinels. ‘They are unnerved and unbalanced,’ she thought. ‘They haven’t seen him either.’

Abelas narrowed his pale golden eyes, and without a word, glanced at his soldiers. They startled, then returned to their posts and positions, solemn as statues, and as immovable as a mountainside. ‘Ah,’ Morrigan realised. ‘He doesn’t have as much control over them.’ She sauntered into his space and snarled. 

“ _You will give him this message, errand boy. I wait for no one. And I will go where I will._ ”

“ _And your son?_ ” 

" _Stay the hell away from him!_ ”

He rolled his head back slightly, letting his neck loosen as for battle.“ _You will come when summoned, and the boy will be safe. Cross the line at your peril. That is all, quickling._ ” 

She burst into a raven, screamed into his face, and shot past them all, quick as a snake, and through the nearest window of the passageway. Banking hard, hearing the answering shouts of the Sentinels and the rustling of their netting magics, she flew as fast as she could to the windowsill that she hoped was Solas’s private quarters. She had calculated correctly. The arrogant bastard had left it open for a breeze and sunshine, though the barriers were strong and impenetrable. 

He lay half-naked on his bed, piled up on furs, and she blinked as she took in his form. She would not have credited the slim elf with having that sort of chiselled abdomen. She supposed being a wandering apostate and then battling a pseudo-archdemon had taken its toll. He was fast asleep. A little grumble escaped his lips; his hands scratched at his belly, then peace descended upon his face again. It made him look hopelessly younger. A tray of honey, water, and herbs was nearby, along with a set of brushes. 

' _Uthenura…_ ' the Well whispered. 

' _What the hell is going on?_ ' was her reply, before she remembered the magical nettings, and took to flight again. 

This time, she aimed towards her own quarters. Towards her son, and to plotting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. Life got weird.


	14. Chapter 14

She felt an insistent nudge as the creature pushed at her again. Its many red-rimmed eyes sparked fear for a moment, but she was more surprised at the alarm she saw in its strange gaze. She moved against the great spirit, feeling strangely calm.

“What is it?”

“You fell asleep, and would not wake,” the creature rumbled. “We feared that this would be your end. Withering and dying in our arms.”

She stilled, considering the words very carefully. Reaching up, she began to stroke the spirit’s neck. Hidden in the shadow of its huge head, sheltered around its legs and body, she wriggled and moved her body. Her words flowed with an ease she had not felt in years. There were no political ramifications to consider. There was no alliance to form or discard, no razor's edge of truth to walk. She could be herself with this creature, and she relished the moment, stretching into the feeling like a cat bathing in a sunbeam.

“I feel fine. Better, actually, than I have in a very long time.”

The creature sighed, leaving a delicious scent of dark forests, sweet meadows, and warm air over her. The smell of hot prey and cool dens, of loyalty and family. She shivered, rolled into the memory-smell, entirely unconscious of the spectacle she made. Her belly and neck were exposed. Her hair spilled, the strands a starry array about her. It was a delicious sight of submission and the joy of life. The great spirit pushed her down and nosed into her belly, taking her offering. She gasped, part in fear and in sudden arousal. She grasped the huge head as much as she could, and felt a rough tongue lick her from her belly to her neck.

She stared into the six red-rimmed eyes above her. A low growl signalled the air, and she shivered.

“Who are you?”

“In the darkened places of your heart, when your mind was opened to the Fade, we were there. We stood beside your spirit. We stayed with you. Moved within you. Felt you tremble.”

She felt a nuzzle from her belly to her neck, and the fastening of teeth on her jaw. 

“Stop!”

She turned to burrow her face into the ruff of soft pelt, luxuriating in the warmth and the strength she felt emanating around the creature’s neck. She panted, smelling and tasting the air, the magelights around them. It felt maddening familiar, the scent emanating and permeating her. 

Witherstalk and elfroot.  


Felandaris and embrium. 

_Ink and paint._

“You know our name.”

In a trance-like state, she felt the movement of the great spirit’s body above her. Twining, twisting, like the roots of a huge tree, pinning her to the ground beneath them.

“I do not.”

A vicious snarl plucked her lie from the air, and tongue and teeth were suddenly all she could feel. The tongue was in her mouth, taking her, filling her, and ripping all falsehoods from the root. The familiar pulse and pull of rhythm of conquest beat in her veins. She had felt it before. Many times, in her bed, in her bedrolls. Before _he_ had taken it all away. She squirmed, trying to move away. The creature chased her effortlessly. Sharp teeth on her shoulder, her chest, and her belly. Nipping, chastising, chasing her pleasure upward. Pulling at her breasts, licking and suckling. Breath, she found, was unnecessary, but she gasped all the same. 

“ **Say our name** ,” the great spirit commanded, giving her time to recover. 

It was a voice in her mind, all of this strange, but she took to it like fish to water, and pushed back at the authority.

“ _No._ ” 

Her arms were restrained, pulled upwards and taut against a huge paw. She snarled into the spirit’s terrifying face, but received a laugh in return. Something about that was familiar too, but her mind shied away, hiding from a memory too big, too painful. Memories of red-rimmed eyes locked on her pain, drinking in her sorrows, encouraging her pleasures.

“ **We are who you know we are. And it will be what must be** ,” the spirit intoned. 

She stared into the dreadful row of teeth. She lifted her hips, offering herself against the massive erection she felt. Shivering, she let her head fall back, offering her neck.

“Fen’Harel,” she whispered. The sound was broken.

Jaws locked tightly on her throat. Not painful, but constricting. She closed her eyes, waiting death. The wolf shook her gently, the power of his jaws undeniable. She clenched her fingers into fists, resolving herself to oblivion. She was ready; it was over. Her people had warned her, but she had never listened.

“ **We would never harm you.** ”

The restraints fell away.


	15. Chapter 15

She was engulfed by a searing ball of rage, fear, and lust. It transformed her so quickly and unexpectedly, she didn’t notice her fingers or toes elongating into claws or her limbs into swift, thinned bones, until she kicked into his belly until and heard the satisfying, pained yip in the air. A feral snarl tore from her throat, answered by his growl of authority and control. She would have none. She had already flipped over and was on the move.

_Run!_

She was a creature powered by instinct. Her stride was clever, and patterns in the mist parted for her, covering her in shadow and cloud. Her tail swept her trail into dewy sprays of faelight and magewisps, intended to enchant and confuse. She did not need to look for the Way. The Fade welcomed her with joy. It pulsed around her like a lover’s heartbeat – _**welcome! Welcome, oh love, thou heart of the Dread Wolf!**_

The eddies and ripples of the Song were a joyous rhythm of exultation and warning, a giggle of praise in the chorus, the glorification of the hunt. What fun! What bliss!

She snapped her jaws at Euphoria, who was chastised not in the least; it twirled merrily in its eddies around Courage, whose sword was raised in high salute, its burning eyes piercing her fear and sending her strength as she reached a high plateau, overlooking a vast, ancient forest.

_Jump! Then run! Run, run!_

Shadows rippled behind her. She took a breath she did not need and leapt.

Her paws hit soft brown earth. A clearing had dissolved from the ether. Trees surrounded her, huge and looming, their ironbark trunks primordial and twisted, their branches high in an endless blue sky. Tiny, many-armed creatures with grey eyes flitted amongst curling, frond-like leaves. Bloody red feathers shimmered like rubies and gripping toes effortlessly navigated their lofty paradise. She found she could swivel her ears; there were larger prey in the undergrowth, and she could feel the uncomfortable thickness of summer in her fur.

Saliva slicked her mouth. She panted for prey she didn’t need and water she didn’t require.

She stopped, tasting the air.

A monster’s landing shook the ground. Thousands of winged creatures took to flight, their colours flashing against the sky like priceless gemstones, like---

_\--the windows of her balcony, a kaleidoscope of colours shining in the mountain sun--_

Her heart skidded, and she fled into the trees, towards the smell of water, over the edge of a shining waterfall---

The memory shattered like glass around her, and in every shard, she saw thousands of red-rimmed eyes glaring, the razor-edged maw bared, and a night sky of darkest fur, glimmering with starlight.

She snapped her jaws in defiance, but leapt back when a fragment flipped back a new reflection.

It was a huge white wolf, with eyes of startling Fade-green, from whose mouth a trail of purest Veil-fire emitted.

**You are so beautiful.**

That voice! She ran.

Into the broken heart of Thedas, he followed her. She leapt into the forgotten memories of battlefields of humans and elves, watching with horror as spirits and wisps re-enacted the slaughters. Some seemed to outright relish their roles. Others were merely resigned. The battles replayed from every angle, from every anguished point of view. Endlessly. The blood spilled over guts and bone, through shields and armour. Unceasing. It was a whirlpool of never-ending emotion for the residents of the Fade. Triumphs and torments, regrets and humiliations, millions of moments, condensed and swirled in a bloodstorm moment of time.

And the battles were _everywhere_. A chorus of memory, time, and space that intertwined in the Dreaming Sea that churned without a conductor.

_And all the players dance…_

She heard a whisper of a wolf’s paw, a breeze of a warm puff against the echo of a lover’s sigh, and she plunged deeper, ever deeper into the Fade. Seeking a place to hide, some place he had not yet discovered, she fell into chasms and plains, ancient rivers flecked with pyrophite and filled with sweet water. She drank deeply, looking into her own illuminated Fade-green eyes. The musky scent of his presence drifted upon the water, and she looked to see him dip his body down, laying insolently upon the river, like the statues peppering the landscapes of home.

_…you cannot resist giving legend the weight of history. The wise do not mistake one for the other._

She shook her head violently, growling as he cautiously crept forward. The memories… they hurt. She did not want to remember! She looked down at the water. The liquid mocked her with his eyes, his eyes, his million eyes. He watched her, waiting to see what she would do.

_**Stop following me!** _

Her voice trembled. She was tired, and her heart ached for all that she had seen. So much elvhen death. So much violence and pain.

**Come with me, vhenan!**

She looked up in astonishment, her heart stopping for a moment. She didn’t remember everything, but those words… those words…… She snarled.

_**Never!** _

And she turned tail and leapt deeper into the Fade, which parted aside like a most willing merchant at a stall…

…into a nightmare of swooping high dragons, and a field of screaming elves.

She recognised the heartsblooded-purple dragon immediately. She was covered in gashes that bled with sluggishness, but to anyone’s gaze, the result was clear: the battle was over. Fire belched in furious rebellion, and she watched as the mighty dragon fell from the sky. Even before the great dragon hit the ground, she was being torn apart by smaller dragons with ghastly wounds and smoking hides; but these were of glistening golds, greens, and blue hues, and none were as large as the one who had fallen.

They feasted upon her flesh as though she was the finest of meats, squabbling even; the sight made her want to gag. Wolves did not eat their own.

Creatures of manifest horror erupted from the clouds, cackling in triumph as they took their part in the feast, diving for the Mother-of-All’s great heart, which had curiously lain torn asunder, left apart… until that moment. They dove from the highest pillars of the Dreaming Sea, snatching the heart as their due price, and turned to the All-Mother’s People with voracious appetites as they snapped and tore at their treat. The dragons ignored it all, turning their backs and tails to the oncoming slaughter. A debt to pay, and at such little cost to them.

 _Traitors!_ she heard the screams of slaves, as the nightmares from the Void and the Abyss opened their hideous visages upon elves whose bodies were decorated with the Tree of Mythal. She watched in horror, her swiftness halted to stop and shake in revulsion.

**No!**

She shuddered, hearing the command in his voice, but stared at the carnage, unable to stop herself. Bearing witness to the slaughter.

**Look away!**

She ignored him and watched as the creatures began to hunt and devour the People of Mythal - as they savoured each scream, prolonging the terror-filled moments as they fought and died.

**Vhenan, please!**

She hadn’t realised she was screaming in wounded yips, piteous and broken, until he shattered a most hideous memory of the Fade, watching as the shards reflected his unending rage in his red-rimmed eyes and the sickles of a thousand moons of sharp, white teeth.

With a twist of the Fade, he thought of the safest, gentlest place in his instinctive mind.

It had been his home once. He had wandered the forests and tended a little herb garden. Drying his royal elfroot, rolling it into fine thin columns, smoking to his heart’s content. Letting it paint new flavours and smells all over his clothes. Pressing it into his cooking, letting his body relax and float into a kind of foggy weightlessness - a different kind of magic.

Adding witherstalk to boiled water to enhance his dreams. Finding the spirits of nightmares desperate to speak and be heard. Listening to them with rapt attention, their stories filled with the memories of aches and pains, resolved by thin branch, both pain-giver and pain reliever. Abortifacient and treatment for headache. A wolf-bane and court poison. But it also elicited the most incredible waking dreams.....a delicious delirium unlike any he'd yet found, and he wanted to play with it and felandaris....

Eating embrium flowers to watch colours explode behind his eyes. A useful trick for his burgeoning interest in painting. And they were delicious in salad...

Finding the limits of a body. So new, feeling so limited, and yet so free. Combining his herbs with dreams and memories, creating new knowledge for his spirit friends.

Sleeping in the shade of a favoured tree, trading that knowledge for wisdom with just such a spirit who liked to travelled the Dreaming Sea and wander the oldest parts of the Fade. His first real friend.

If he had been in his waking form, he never would have pulled her to this place.

He smoothed the Fade and she collapsed into the furs. He nosed her gently, licking her ears, her muzzle, and her neck. He soothed her with cautious rumbles, his ears pricked forward, all attention on her smells and sounds. The whimpers of pain drove him to the edge of reason with the need to help. He curled around her back, determined to drive away the shivers that wracked her frame. She tucked her beautiful face into her tail, hiding herself away, a small moan of disbelief and anguish lifting to join the Song that permeated in the tears of the Fade, even now, this far away from the memory.

**Safe.**

He repeated the idea to her, pushing all of his thought into the air around them.

_The All-Mother!_

He shivered, tucking his face into her neck for a moment, breathing in the cold mountain scent of her snow-white fur. He let his other eyes open, peering into the beauty of her. Like a true wolf, the fur was deceptively white from a distance, but was truly blended with shades of grey, black, brown, and even red, deep in the undercoat. She shimmered and shook, her form hazy as it tried to hide in the shadows of the cave, and finding no snow to aid it. A creature of winter, of the moon, and the hidden change of the season. He waited patiently until her breathing evened out, her control returning. In his embrace, she turned, her Fade-green eyes sparkling with tears, fear, and confusion. She stirred, and lifting herself, she shook her great head and considered him, lying prone at her feet.

_I know you._

He said nothing, but his six eyes opened, red and wary and challenging.

She snorted, and it sounded strange, coming from a snout.

_Still so proud. Apt, I suppose._

He watched as she took in their surroundings. The cave was not large, but it was comfortable. Furs lined the floor, which made her curious; were they Dream furs, or real? She poked at them with her paws. She was getting used to being a wolf; her life as an elf felt so far away. It was in a world that was dull and rough in comparison to these colours, smells, and sounds. She couldn’t find herself caring about that world when there was an interesting _emotion_ in the wall over _there_ ….

She investigated, and he let her. She peered into a memory of years spent hunting, eating, shitting, and living as a wolf in the woods of Arlathan. She watched him enjoying his life as a member of a pack, learning all there was to know of the ways of the beast, the forest, its structure…its meaning. Generations were born and died, and he stayed until… until…

 _…a jawbone…a pendant…I know this…_ she said momentarily, then stopped. Violent memories echoed within herself. The feelings resonated. She knew it, like she knew the sound of his voice, and the beating of her own heart. She shook her head, pulling herself out and away from the confusion.

_No. This is just another trick of yours._

She looked over her shoulder where he still sat insolently, his eyes narrowing. The whiff of another memory caught her, and she let herself be pulled towards it, despite the warning in her heart.


	16. Chapter 16

“There is nothing I can do. Not until she awakens,” the woman standing by the Inquisitor said stiffly. She had grey hair and strangely calm brown eyes. She dressed like a Circle mage with dark blue robes trimmed in fennic fur against the cold, but she held herself apart. Across her back was a solid pack filled with various scrolls, vials, and bundles of freshly picked flowers and roots gathered on her way to the Seekers’ compound, named Alderai’s Gate, in the Hunterhorn Mountains. She had taken her time. Divine Victoria spoke to her with patience and projected calm, belying the fear and anger in her heart. 'So this is who Fiona sends.'

“Can you tell us anything?” 

“I can tell you many things. The question is open-ended. That, which is the obvious problem, lies before you. I know when the forces of a rift howl outside. This is not outside. It is inside and outside. Within. Unstable and leaking. I can teach a rift mage how to not to die, but she is not awake. She is not completely dead, but she is not fully alive. Something else. A deviance.” Cassandra opened her mouth to protest, but the woman blustered on.

“It is uncertain and certain. Prices that have been paid may not be paid again. But costs change.”

Cullen pinched his nose, a headache blooming fierce across skull. It joined the previous night’s ache, and the one before that. A never-ending series of painful tension headaches that had no end in sight. He resigned himself to opening the negotiations.

“If it’s money you want," he began.

“Misunderstanding. Typical Templar.” 

“Former Templar. As well you should remember. I bloody well vetted you --- Maker's breath!”

“Payment was made. To my rift. This rift doesn’t want my payment. It wants hers.”

She pointed and blinked owlishly in the low light afforded by the fireplace and candles. Leliana, Cassandra, and Cullen looked with horror at Lavellan, who whispered at something only she could see in her dreams. Her body still looked to be formed of living veil quartz, if such a comparison was even appropriate; to their eyes, it was the only thing that came close. She still pulsed in shades of sickly green, pained blue, and tannish brown. The strobing and piercing colours would turn their hardened stomachs, one by one, if they stared at her too long. Her eyes, milky and unseeing, fluttered open and closed, recognising nothing and no one. Once or twice, she flailed out into the air, sometimes making fists, only to curl into herself. Leliana recovered her speech first.

“What payment?” 

The rift mage looked at the spymaster with faint exasperation.

“Her life, of course. But you knew that. Why am I here?”

“Can you close her rift?” The question was urgent, and the fate of many could rest on it.

“Difficult. Tricky. Perhaps, but—”

“But what?” Cullen cut in, hope blooming in his heart for the first time in what felt like months.

The mage looked at him again as though he were a specimen, and not a very interesting one. She began to circle around the bed. She held a long-fingered hand to her mouth, nails elegantly tapered, calloused from holding quills and staff work. She nodded and then shook her head in turns as she considered the problem before her. Little phrases leaked from her.

“Yes, that would… no. That would definitely kill her. But what if… yes. No. No, that would cause the rift to enter her further. Yes. No. No, that would open a bigger rift into the whole valley! Stupid, naïve, amateurish. Wait - yes! Yes, into the lungs then down into the trachea to open her mouth to speak some…no. No, she would fight; no one wants to be a sock puppet, and if the incantations came out the slightest bit wrong, we might summon demons, or turn her into a real abomination, and no. No, no. Mustn’t. Hmm. What about speeding the infection, hmm... possibly. If she fractures, could we return her? Hmm...no, reduction must be whole, as with all rifts, else risking demonic flooding…”

On and on she went, muttering, considering, discarding, and otherwise playing with the hopes and despair of the three others in the room.

“I have it.”

They whirled on her, three pairs of eyes brimming with hope.

“Parchment, ink, chalk, chair, desk. Tea! And toasties.”

The Divine reached deep into her heart for the compassion of Andraste. She found it somehow, smiled politely, and nodded. “We will see what can be done. But not in this room.”

“Oh, but it must be here!” cried the mage. “I must see the rift. Examine. Think. Process. Not possible otherwise. No. No other way. Might as well not have asked for me.”

Leliana sighed and said, “I’ll set up a rotation of guards and organise for a cot.”

The strange mage nodded as though it was all a foregone conclusion. She set about wandering the room, looked puzzled, then frowned at them as though they had played a rotten trick on her. “Which one of you wants to explain the dog?”

They froze again, staring at her.

“What dog?” asked Cullen, thinking of his mabari, Coop, who was in his room. “Uh, it’s probably me. I have a mabari now. A Fereldan war hound…”

The woman shook her head, dismissing him again. Cullen set his teeth and tried to think about how this woman could help the Inquisitor instead of how he wanted very badly to---

“No, not you. Her dog. Where is it?” She had wandered to the foot of Lavellan’s bed again and was crouched under it, peering into the shadows beneath.

“Lavellan keeps no dog,” said Leliana.

“There is,” said the mage. “Or was.” Her face pinched, and she rubbed her temples. “Rifts. There are always eyes. Were always. Looking. Watching. Keep watch! You must keep watch!”

She rubbed her head slowly, and began to breathe deeply. Cullen watched as her mouth formed rhythmic motions: counting one, two, three, four…. He knew the technique well - far too well. A wave of compassion hit him, and he felt ashamed of himself. When she got to twelve, she stopped. She lifted herself up, shoulders back and proud again. 

“I like sharp cheese and onion in my toasties.”

She directed this to the Divine as though she were speaking to a barmaid. Cassandra’s eyebrow raised imperiously.

“We will see what can be done.”

“Excellent. I am Your Trainer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fucking loved Your Trainer. Loved her speech patterns, loved her no bullshit attitude, loved her weirdness. Loved, loved, loved her.


	17. Chapter 17

Lavellan was within a pool of memories that felt precious and familiar, though nothing she saw made sense to her. She could see ahead of her a tall figure with dark hair, shining with unnatural radiance. The person was crouched down amongst the trees. 

“There’s no point hiding,” she heard the silky croon.

She heard a rustle in the darkness, and then eyes in the forest were shining back at the dark-haired elvhen woman. They were gleaming, glistening moons of bronze, sunken deep in the darkness of leaves and undergrowth.

“I see you,” said the sweetness of the woman’s mouth, a deep brown berry that upturned to form a song of wonder and merciless judgement.

The memory told Lavellan that this was Mythal, and she had called to this creature in the forest. The creature had heard her call, no matter where he had gone to hide away – whether deep in the Dreaming Sea or in the furthest reaches of the Void. She had called for him across the land, searching for him wherever he roamed. He had felt her song in the wind, when stepping into the mouths of rivers, or into the dreams of forests, and finally he was chased into the depths of his sanctuary. There he had waited, cornered. He had felt trapped by the Elvhen woman’s power, but still, he resisted. 

She gently coaxed him with her magic, soothing and lulling him with promises of safety and security. She offered fat, bloody handfuls of ram’s meat, the freshness causing great salivation in his mouth. She rocked and swayed her hips, singing her song, weaving a dream of seductive humility. She was asking him to serve her: to serve vengeance. 

“Help me, great spirit! Together, we will teach them right from wrong,” she sang. “Help me, oh great spirit! Together, we will teach them to guard themselves, to learn shame, modesty, and respect for themselves. We will make the People strong!”

His eyes glittered. 

She sang and moved in the darkness.

Slowly, he crept forward. 

She sang and danced for him, giving her dream life under the sound of slapping feet and the movement of her glowing arms, whipping dark hair, and the love she carried for her People.

His laughter came as soft as the new moon. When his teeth finally ripped into her offerings, accepting her pact completely, she lay exhausted by his side, her chest heaving with the exertion and drained of her magic. Her feet were red and blistered, and her throat had become raw with pain. He considered her for a long moment as she drifted into the Fade, her eyes falling closed against her will as he effortlessly cast a healing sleep over her form. He slid to his haunches.

It was the first time the Great Wolf, the Dread Nightmare of the Void, the Dark Heart of the First Forest, stood sentry over the first of the Elvhen. 

It would not be the last.

\---

The first time he came to her chambers, he slunk to the shadows at her footboard, his haunches low, his teeth bared in a sign of agitation. 

“Be easy,” she said, her glistening skin bursting with her magic. The veilfire torches illuminating her innermost sanctuary danced patterns across the precious bronze mosaics, but all paled in the brilliance of her spirit.

He bowed his head, his eyes trained on her golden fingertips. In a moment of brazen audacity, he inched forward, aching to feel them, to bring them into his mouth.

‘Just one lick,’ he thought. ‘Just one taste.’

A hard slap resounded across his muzzle, and hot white stars burst across his eyes. He took the correction without a sound.

“Remember your place, Athimathe.”

Her voice was lovingly firm. Infinitely understanding. Devastatingly kind. He crawled on his belly to the lay at the foot of her bed. He was deeply chastised. Righteously humbled. His spirit soared with perfect reverence. He measured the gratitude and was content. He guarded her with perfect humility for a thousand years, walking the razor's edge of service and appreciation of Mythal's gifts, desiring nothing more than to stay by her side until the day he met Wisdom. The exchanged whispers would lead from one provoking thought after another until the avalanche of change was inevitable.

“Are you proud of what you are accomplishing with her?” asked Wisdom one afternoon as they walked under the canopy of trees. He still felt strange in this body, out of sync in the waking world when he could be in the Fade, peaceful and at one with his fur and teeth. He would often stare at his hands and feet, mesmerised by the new self he had received.

“Proud?” he said in confusion. “I do not understand the question.”

Wisdom’s wore a young boy’s face today, his beautiful dark skin sweet and innocent, but for his eyes. No one could mistake him for a youth when his eyes were so knowing, as though he could burst the heart of an elder’s argument with a well-placed shake of his head and a few negating statements. It really pissed off Elgar’nan when Wisdom did that in this particular form. The boy looked at Athimathe now and gave him that simple head-shake, and suddenly he could see why Elgar’nan found it so irritating.

“I serve Mythal,” Athimathe said abruptly, taking up their walk again, enjoying the feel of the soil beneath his toes. “There is nothing more for me.”

“And there is no pleasure in this task?”

“Of course, there is. There is—”

There was a pause. Athimathe stared at the path ahead of them. It stretched into the woods, where it became darker as the undergrowth and canopy restricted more light. He stopped to stare down at the boy – at Wisdom.

“Oh no.”

Wisdom looked up at his friend, and there was such knowing sympathy in his dark brown eyes. His rounded eyes were full of aching sadness and compassion, in his fathomless well of understanding.

“How long have you known?” 

His voice was clipped. Every syllable came out stoic and harsh, as though his entire being was not being scourged under a storm of chaos. As though Wisdom had not stripped him bare and set him outside to feel the storm, naked and unprepared.

“A long time, my friend.” 

Athimathe shook his head. Fear chased his features.

“What am I becoming?”

Wisdom’s ancient visage, incongruous on the young elvhen boy’s face, pinched with worry. 

“I do not know. The great spirits are leaving this world. Hunted and trapped, or taken by the Void. And you, my dear friend… a spirit of humility has ever been rare. You must know this. You were born as a reflection of the waking world and the hopes of a dying First Forest as it was being swallowed by the Void. To take a body is to be in danger of feeling more. _To become more._ Yet you chose to serve one of the Elvhen. Has she not been careful in her discipline?”

He shut his eyes tightly, feeling his shame and reverence, as was proper. But under it all, he felt the new emotion, exultant in the new body he wore: pride. Love and pride for Mythal. For she had chosen him, and he loved serving her with all his heart. He glowed with her praise, and felt desire above all to please her. To improve himself in order to serve her better. 

She had broken him. Humility could not be proud.

He opened his eyes, and to his shock, he saw magic glowing like a star between the boy and him. The grey-blue glow of wicked ice hung suspended like a dagger, aimed at Wisdom’s heart. He hadn't known he'd done it until it was there.

“Please,” he whispered to Wisdom, his storm-tossed eyes wide with panic. “Don’t tell anyone?”

Wisdom narrowed his eyes. It went against wisdom to hide knowledge. It would have to be very specific circumstances to warrant the wisdom of dishonesty. Athimathe was asking Wisdom to put its own nature at risk – an incredible act of selfishness. If ever proof was needed that Athimathe had changed, irrevocably even, this was it.

“On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You will never hide yourself from me. You will always come first to me when you seek wisdom. When you seek wisdom, you will always first exchange knowledge with me, and you will never hold anything back. You will never break this pact, come what may.”

Athimathe took the ice dagger from the air. It was so bitterly cold. It hurt his fingers, the ache blistering the pads, but without a word, he slid the edge of the blade against his left hand. It welled with blood. He slipped it into his mouth, sucked hard, then pulled a single golden bead from between his lips. He dropped the blinding bead into Wisdom’s waiting palm. 

“Wisdom, so sworn. You have a piece of my Heart,” he said. The words came with power. They were old words, resonating with a cadence and rhythm of a pack that moved across a territory, running for hours, with easy loping strides, tiring out its prey, snapping its neck, then feeding and gorging. “Wisdom, Wisdom, Wisdom. SO SWORN! You. You? YOU. So SWORN. YOU Have it. You have it. You, you. You Wisdom. You have it. A piece! A piece. Of it. You have it. A piece of my Heart. MY HEART.” 

The song reverberated. It was a chorus of howls, the gibbering of laughter, the snarling of long tongues across murderous teeth. It was a song of violence, ascending to a horrible throbbing all around them. It encased them, and the forest hissed in response. Around them was the rustle and sigh of the air, the leaves, the roots that felt the Great Wolf, the Dread Nightmare of the Void, the Dark Heart of the First Forest, slicing away a part of itself: a power exchange. The darkness harrowed them, weighing the balance. Wisdom stood still, letting the Forest of Arlathan, the Great Forest of the Elvhen, make a judgement. It evidently felt itself a protector of this child... of a sorts.

And then it was over.

The golden bead pulsed once in the boy’s palm, then was quiet. The ice dagger dissolved, and Athimathe collapsed on the ground, panting and groaning with the pain and exertion of cleaving his heart.

“First,” said Wisdom, holding his friend carefully, “thank you. And second… I think you need a new name. At least, maybe when you’re around me. Let's go to the village nearby. It has a very nice pub. I think you'll like it.”

He had. Very much.

\---

Lavellan stepped from the memory bubble, and stepped into the den he had made. He looked into her great white fur and waited. She stared at him, tears shining in her eyes.

_How much of you hasn’t been changed or corrupted?_

He flinched and turned aside.

She persisted, finding herself pursuing him, ready for a fight.

_This is why you fought me about Cole when he wanted so badly to confront that Templar. This is why you are so passionate about spirits. This is the answer to all of it. You’re one of them._

He snarled. 

_No, and not as you think. Not for thousands of years._

_You were born of the Void and of the Great Spirits? What does that mean?_

He sighed.

_Let it go, Inquisitor. It doesn’t matter anymore. All is faded and dust. Nothing matters now but what remains._

She nipped at his face, and he snapped back. They were instantly at hackles, wolves testing one another.

_I will not let it go! You say you’re going to bring down the Veil! Bring the false gods back!_

_I will do what I must._

_Why? Why must you do this?_

_Because if I don’t, much worse will befall us all._

She hissed in a breath, circling him. 

_Tell me._

_No._

The flat refusal blazed through her and set her nerves on fire. She could not bear witness to his stubbornness and not set her will against him. Every tool, every weapon she had at her disposal came out.

_Why won’t you **trust me?!**_

Six red eyes glared at her in a shaggy black mane of menace. White teeth snarled.

_I trust you with my heart. Whatever ragged pieces of my heart I have left are yours. The power and knowledge I now possess is mine alone. I will bear this burden alone – yes, alone! And when it kills me, so be it: but not before I save my people. I will **not** fail again!_

She screamed at him, a wolf’s cry of impotence and rage. 

_Stop making decisions for me! For all of us!_

_You do not have the benefit of the Wisdom of ages,_ he said with anguish. _I did, once. I tried to trust others with power before; I am sorry, vhenan, but I shall be taking those lessons to my grave._

_**You arrogant bastard!** _

She launched herself at him, tooth and claw, and the fight began in earnest.


End file.
